John Carmack talks next gen consoles at Quakecon 2013 keynote

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Heh, I called him Johnny. Just throwing a curveball there.

Anyway the whole talk can be viewed here. Looks about 3 hours. starts ~15 minutes in.

http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577

So far I'm about 42 minutes in, watching intermittently, which I think is the majority of his console talk. I guess much of it is stuff us B3Ders already knew, but still interesting.

The headline Kotaku and GAF already ran with is that although he hasn't benchmarked the next gen consoles rigorously yet, he thinks they are "very close" and "very good".


Preferred 360 over PS3 but Sony's dev tool are much better this time.

He said something like it's amazing how similar the consoles are in architecture this time. He seemed to think that was both good and bad. Easier to develop, but he doesn't think a hegemony is necessarily good either.

He thought 2-3 years ago Intel might buy up the console market with Larrabee. In essence offer such a low price MS/Sony couldn't refuse. Intel has money and engineering resources noone else has.

He wouldn't have been surprised to see consoles go with high end mobile tech this time. Something like 16 ARM cores and a bunch of Power VR GPU cores or the like. Which I found very interesting. He suspects the lack of 64-bit in time was what stopped them, because they ended up with a lot of RAM.

He thinks Android "micro consoles" like Ouya wont make a big dent now, but could someday.

He thinks this is the last console gen, some combo of android consoles, mobile/phone hardware, cloud, etc will replace dedicated boxes before next gen. There wont be a "Sony box" and "MS box" like as we see them now.

Thinks digital is clearly and obviously the future and superior. Expects to see no optical drive SKU's within a few years, and thinks it was up in the air whether PS4/XBO would have them.

Thinks certain things should just go away next gen, he mentions 30 FPS games. Says it was a struggle to hit 60 on 360/PS3, but now they have a lot more power, and if you spend power getting that lighting shader just right, the user's TV gamma setting or something will probably prevent them noticing anyway. (Seems he is obviously wrong here already :p )

Thinks graphics will continue to improve, but theyre no longer going to make people go out and buy a certain game anymore as in the past. Basically seemed to say it's all incremental now.

Unified memory, led by the consoles, is far superior to separate bus discrete cards, he says. However Nvidia has a vested interest in the high end discrete card scientific market and will fight this.

Thinks the console way of setting aside x cores for games is much better than Android, where apparently you often have to fight over cores.
 
"Kinect is like a button-less mouse".

Haha!
 
To be fair, it appears that he is talking about the 1st Gen Kinect. From the E3 vids, you don't need to "wave" your hands anymore to activate Kinect 2.
 
So he takes Google seriously, I can't say I disagree :LOL:
I'm shocked by the conservatism in front of the noise about Google working on something (including some words from ERP on the matter), initiative as the shield and so on.

I think disruption is coming whether "traditionalists" like it or not.
 
So he takes Google seriously, I can't say I disagree :LOL:
I'm shocked by the conservatism in front of the noise about Google working on something (including some words from ERP on the matter), initiative as the shield and so on.

I think disruption is coming whether "traditionalists" like it or not.

I'm pretty bullish on the Ouya concept, if not necessarily the Ouya itself.

It starts with SNES emulation and $99. For 99 dollars, it becomes a "why the hell not" device. With mobile hardware getting more and more powerful, you can do more and more bigger budget 3D games too. Tegra 3>Tegra 4>Logan...

If somebody with the $ to polish it does it, I think they might have something.

Maybe.
 
Some more interesting tidbits:

- He compared the community backlash and public reaction to the Xbox One initial policies to a witch hunt and that posterity would look upon those technologies differently.

- John Carmack also talked about privacy concerns.

- Carmack also felt disappointed at the fact that 'cos modern computer systems are so vast, there's no way to truly master a platform.

You can listen to his words in this 4 minutes video.

http://kotaku.com/john-carmack-talks-xbox-one-backlash-and-kinect-privacy-994803231

Edit: He also expressed disappointment that companies are still targeting 30 fps for their games when they have plenty of power to spare now.
 
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I'm shocked by the conservatism in front of the noise about Google working on something (including some words from ERP on the matter), initiative as the shield and so on.
It's not conservatism, it's just apathy ...

I don't understand the concept that some just can't see how a billion dollar core game market won't disappear regardless of how big casual gaming becomes. What google does is irrelevant to console core gaming unless they launch a console with high power (it takes Watts to push out the pixels) which no one is even suggesting as an option. All Google entering the market might do is make Microsoft less profitable but it won't impact the actual gaming.

PS. I never liked the term core gaming, but I came to realise that I far more hate when people pretend there is no such thing.
 
PS. I never liked the term core gaming, but I came to realise that I far more hate when people pretend there is no such thing.
Indeed, it's like Crazy Golf being considered the death knell of golf, because it's cheaper and far more people are happy to play a little light game than invest in clubs. There are core golfers, and core gamers. However, I do think the core gamer market can be satisfied with a different flavour of games that provide good gameplay without needing AAA graphics. Many are like myself finding themselves with less time to sink into big titles, but happy to enjoy small download games with more gameplay than story. I'd probably be well served with a good, small console/tablet just as well as a new powerful console. If there were games like PSN downloads available on the new Nexus 7, and that had a controller option, I'd be highly tempted over an XB1 or PS4.
 
The question of "core" is defining it and understanding how big that market is. If we use the example of the best selling game on Xbox 360 ( Black Ops), that was close to what, 15 million copies or something? Well, there's 60+ million Xbox 360s out there. So if you assume only core gamers buy Black Ops, that means the absolute best you can hope to do by catering to the core is reaching ~25% of the market. Maybe you say not every core gamer wants to play COD, and the core gamer market could be bigger. Well, the next best selling titles sell significantly less. Very significantly. I personally believe the reason COD outsells everyone else is because it appeals to casual gamers. Those people who pick up a game once a week to play for an hour and buy maybe one or two games a year. Other "core" games struggle to hit 5 million in sales (across two platforms), which is a drop in the hat compared to the total number of consoles sold. So what are those other millions of people doing with their consoles? If you read some of the actual usage data on the consoles, they're watching a ton of streaming video. Yeah, core gamers will always be around, but is there enough of them to support a cutting-edge game machine? Look at the hardware we're getting this time around, which is going to be good enough, but not cutting-edge. There's your answer.
 
Cutting edge? A hand me down from PC technology? Hell as Carmack says they could have went for scaled up mobile technology as well ... the PS2/PS3 era is gone.
 
The question of "core" is defining it and understanding how big that market is. If we use the example of the best selling game on Xbox 360 ( Black Ops), that was close to what, 15 million copies or something? Well, there's 60+ million Xbox 360s out there. So if you assume only core gamers buy Black Ops, that means the absolute best you can hope to do by catering to the core is reaching ~25% of the market. Maybe you say not every core gamer wants to play COD, and the core gamer market could be bigger. Well, the next best selling titles sell significantly less. Very significantly. I personally believe the reason COD outsells everyone else is because it appeals to casual gamers. Those people who pick up a game once a week to play for an hour and buy maybe one or two games a year. Other "core" games struggle to hit 5 million in sales (across two platforms), which is a drop in the hat compared to the total number of consoles sold. So what are those other millions of people doing with their consoles? If you read some of the actual usage data on the consoles, they're watching a ton of streaming video. Yeah, core gamers will always be around, but is there enough of them to support a cutting-edge game machine? Look at the hardware we're getting this time around, which is going to be good enough, but not cutting-edge. There's your answer.

I've mentioned this a lot but personally I think the idea of core gamer is heavily tied to gender and age.

It's basically young males. And they want a certain kind of game that can best be described as A) as graphically extravagant as possible and B) more or less, extremely complex. They are the ones who patronize high end consoles with complex controllers, and high end gaming PC's. They want that Oblivion idea of a vast, rich, extremely complex world, or the same in twitch shooter form with Call of Duty (not a vast world, but extremely deep and competitive twitch shooting with RPG like gameplay perks, something one can invest hundreds of hours in). And I guess virtual combat/war also appeals much.

Certainly, people outside this demo such as females, 40+ year olds, can and do play core games, but they aren't the meat of it. Those demos tend toward mobile games, Facebook games, the Wii, and so forth.
 
It's a shame that Carmack apparently didn't get the whole picture regarding the xbone's criticism.
He seems to reduce everything to people being uncomfortable to always-on kinect, 24-hour internet and physical copy fetishism.. ending up calling it an exaggerated witch hunt.

I guess one needs to be a gamer on a budget (or just not rich to name it properly) to understand the value in freely buying/selling used copies. Or the danger for our wallets that is to eventually have the competitive retailer industry dying and becoming hostage to a digital distribution monopoly (which Steam is not, to the surprise of many).

Maybe if my paycheck got me a comfortable lifestyle either the games were all 10€ or 70€, I wouldn't think these would be issues either.
 
It's a shame that Carmack apparently didn't get the whole picture regarding the xbone's criticism.
He seems to reduce everything to people being uncomfortable to always-on kinect, 24-hour internet and physical copy fetishism.. ending up calling it an exaggerated witch hunt.

I guess one needs to be a gamer on a budget (or just not rich to name it properly) to understand the value in freely buying/selling used copies. Or the danger for our wallets that is to eventually have the competitive retailer industry dying and becoming hostage to a digital distribution monopoly (which Steam is not, to the surprise of many).

Maybe if my paycheck got me a comfortable lifestyle either the games were all 10€ or 70€, I wouldn't think these would be issues either.

I think he's just a realist unlike some console gamers who wish to hold onto the past.

Everything being digital only (no used sales) hasn't kept tablets from becoming the fastest growing gaming segment and media consumption segment in the world.

It hasn't prevented digital distribution from pretty much taking over the PC landscape (many analysts estimate that DD represents over 70% of all PC software sales with that number increasing every year).

The only holdouts for used physical media is home consoles, movies and music. For music it's just a tiny fraction of music that is bought and sold. For movies it too is moving increasingly to digital distribution. It wouldn't surprise me if BRD represents the last major physical distribution method for movies and any future physical distribution format will be about as niche as laserdisc.

I do think he was premature in thinking either of the consoles could have done well if they had gone DD only this generation, unless both went DD. I fully expect that it'll become harder and harder to find used copies of games as this generation moves on as less and less people buy new copies.

People that are already mostly buying used games won't buy new if they can help it. But people buying new games will increasingly move to digital purchases which means the potential pool of used games is going to shrink more and more as the generation moves on.

It's sort of like the people that clung to their vinyl records as CD's became more and more popular. Sure vinyl records had it's advantages, but CD's were the future. It's like any turning point in history. Some people cling to the past while some people embrace the future.

While I'm not sure it'll happen, it's quite possible that some titles that straddle the AAA/not quite AAA line may go DD only for this upcoming generation as they have done on the PC.

Regards,
SB
 
The question of "core" is defining it and understanding how big that market is.

Personally I think the terms "hardcore", "core" and "casual" are only useful when used to describe a gamer based on his/her consumption rate.

I doubt those terms can be used to readily and accurately describe gamers based on hardware or software preference.
 
Silent_Buddha, I won't engage in yet another discussion about the public backlash on the xbone's former policies being well justified or not. By now, we all know all sides of the story and it's up to each own to form an opinion on the matter.

I do think it's a shame that John Carmack didn't even address the arguments that I referred above, which are IMO a lot more important to the typical consumer than being able to treat a game like a book or feeling uncomfortable with an always-on kinect.
 
Says he thought Xbox 360 was a bit more powerful than PS3 there, as well as easier. Controversial for vintage console wars.
 
Says he thought Xbox 360 was a bit more powerful than PS3 there, as well as easier.


Given Rage and the fact his engine didn't gain traction, what's his authority on this subject? We haven't seen ND rewrite TLoU. Crytek didn't make a forward renderer tailored to 360 and deferred tailored to the PS3. He's not providing any evidence other than his word. I don't see how we can know. Is there a consensus on who is the best developer with the most advanced engine? Or did someone breaks their NDA?
 
Says he thought Xbox 360 was a bit more powerful than PS3 there, as well as easier. Controversial for vintage console wars.

I am pretty sure he was referring to being able to tap into the processing power; he's on record saying that the PS3 had more raw processing power.

http://www.gamingunion.net/news/carmack-ps3-has-more-raw-power-than-the-xbox-360--4657.html

EDIT: regardless its a win for 360 forum warriors bc whats the point to having more power if you can't tap into it?
 
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