One of the most heralded game designers sees the evolution of game consoles as lackluster.
In a recent Gamesradar interview, Carmack was optimistic about the increased rendering power of an Xbox 720 or PS4, but beyond that there isn’t much to be excited about.
“Any creative vision that a designer could come up with, we can do a pretty good job representing on current generation and certainly on PC. In many ways I am not all that excited about the next generation. It will let us do everything we want to do now, with the knobs turned up,” Carmack said.
He continued, “If you take a current game like Halo which is a 30 hertz game at 720p; if you run that at 1080p, 60 frames with high dynamic frame buffers, all of a sudden you’ve sucked up all the power you have in the next-generation. It will be what we already have, but a lot better.”
We are at a point in the console gaming landscape that is completely uncharted territory. Case in point – the Xbox 360 was released in late 2005, almost seven years ago. Never before has a console lived that long with not even an official hint about its successor.
The same case is true with the PS3, but it was released in 2006. So that one is more than five years old and no one is even really talking about the PS4. At least murmurs about the Xbox 720 have started to pop up.
In fact, Microsoft has threatened legal action against sites that posted an allegedly leaked document detailing the new Xbox plans.
That’s not something that a company does unless said document is actually legitimate. The document in question mentioned that the Xbox 720 would be $300 and will launch in 2013. Kinect will apparently be a major part of the device, with built-in integration.
