He's also a multi-platform dev, and the overall trend there doesn't disagree with him.
John Carmack talks next gen consoles at Quakecon 2013 keynote
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Not a single word from what I could tell, although I had to abandon watching the stream with about 15 minutes left of the Q&A session due to the player stuttering and skipping ahead to near the end several times. From what I saw, it was mostly esotheric (for me!) programming-centric questions anyway, like with last year's keynote Q&A.
I think someone asked him about Doom 4 in the questions segment. I couldn't hear the question but I cant imagine what else would engender such a reaction, probably if anybody wants to listen carefully and turn the volume up they might be able to hear the question.
But his response was that he asked and was told he was not allowed to talk about it at all.
What a disaster, I remember 2, 3, 4 years ago expecting Doom 4 footage at Quakecon each and every year. Now we've even gotten farther away from seeing it.
What trend are you noticing when performance and/or memory has been left on the table for the 360 and PS3? All throughout this cycle. In addition, all of the "state of the art" games that Digital Foundry gushes over and writes multiple articles about would have to be completely rewritten. So, I'm not sure why you feel merely his word supercedes a rewrite of a 1st party title or another professional opinion. He made Rage. He's not working on GTA V or just completed Metro Last Light.
It speaks to his point of reference as a multi-platform developer, where the overall trend is that the 360 has been more consistent in terms of performance and developer accessibility this generation.
The pending transition to next gen and the onerous system limitations of the current gen don't give me much reason to expect that much is left in the tank, and I don't think we need to dwell on it when Durango and Orbis can almost have frame rate hiccups on the order of what the previous gen can offer in peak.
This is a fairly silly statement.The next gen has hardware 6-8x as powerful as the current gen.
When facing the prospect of managing thousands of GFLOPs, the scale of an architecture that has several hundred is poor in contrast.
A variation in ALU utilization for the Orbis GPU, say 10-20 percent, would be the whole arithmetic output of Xenos.
On top of that, unless we're assuming absolutely horrible utilization for the entire gen, we are not looking at hundreds of GFLOP/s or GB/s of wasted resources this gen.
Let's say we give this gen a passing grade and assume it could get 75% of peak. That leaves us wondering where 60 GFLOPs could go, when that is a rounding error to the next gen.
It had a good run, but there's no vast amount of untapped treasure to be extracted from the current consoles this late in the cycle.
When facing the prospect of managing thousands of GFLOPs, the scale of an architecture that has several hundred is poor in contrast.
A variation in ALU utilization for the Orbis GPU, say 10-20 percent, would be the whole arithmetic output of Xenos.
On top of that, unless we're assuming absolutely horrible utilization for the entire gen, we are not looking at hundreds of GFLOP/s or GB/s of wasted resources this gen.
Let's say we give this gen a passing grade and assume it could get 75% of peak. That leaves us wondering where 60 GFLOPs could go, when that is a rounding error to the next gen.
It had a good run, but there's no vast amount of untapped treasure to be extracted from the current consoles this late in the cycle.
Only poor people do that. If you had the choice, you likely wouldn't.
1) What do only poor people do? 2) Are you saying 'poor people' shouldn't be catered for via consoles?
Im saying if you could get your groceries without every going to the store like a rich person, you would. Its not like going to the store has some sentimental value or something, thats why stores like bestbuy is losing business. Digital distribution, when widely available will dominate going out and buying physical copies.
The reason why someone would do that is because they have no other choices, when offered the choice and when people can get decent internet plans, I really doubt people would really want to buy their games from the store. Its like how itunes completely changed how people buy music. Digital is the future, and games are no exception.
I am not saying anything about poor people. There will always be people who can't afford technology one way or another. The way people consume product is based on how they are limited and not really based on human convention. When something easier can be used, such as getting someone else to do your grocery shopping, done by many people with lots of money, people will use it over the convention.
Next gen consoles are next gen for a reason. Its like asking why make a smart phone when most people won't want to pay $80 a month for plans back in 2004. People adapted so they can have easier access to their things they enjoy. The majority of people with any income will adapt to digital distribution when they get the chance because its easier. Even if it means paying for better internet. If there is no better internet service in your area, this puts pressure on the providers and opens up markets because of the demand.
Physical media will still be here for a couple of years but I would say by the end of this gen, we will move to digital distribution and cloud media for the consoles.
That's untrue. not for me personally who buys everything online, but for many people they like going to the shops. My mum, for example, won't use a grocery delivery service from the supermarket she shops it. Furthermore, Brimstone included going to the hairdressers. Do you believe that'll happen online too? Clothes shopping is another case where going to the shops is part of the experience for various reasons. I'm not going to claim people shopping as a habit is going to ensure the health of BnM game stores forever more, but it's not tied to wealth or opportunity as you suggest.
Ummm, "Only poor people do that." is saying something about poor people.
There's a whole other thread on this subject, now I understand what you were trying to say, which would be a better place to discuss download only.
I listened to all 3 hours of his talk. For the most part he said that these consoles will be able to do things that were previously optimized around but no longer needed, however a huge focus on graphics won't make a better game (duh). He also sees this next generation lasting about as long as the current one though doesn't see a next next-gen Xbox but something augmented by the cloud, whether it be cloud assisted or full-on cloud gaming. As such, that next transition shouldn't be as rough. He also wanted someone to hypothetically take a 5 minute section of gameplay, render it offline with a bunch of nifty techniques, and see what it would look like. He postulated that it really wouldn't make the game that much more fun to play.
As such, graphics are definitely being better, but they shouldn't be the be-all end all of gaming. Only limit is creativity.
As such, graphics are definitely being better, but they shouldn't be the be-all end all of gaming. Only limit is creativity.
Carmack is great. It's easy to listen him for hours. My only disagreement is about Google Glass and AR glasses becoming huge any time soon. I think people who wear them will be the object of ridicule. I can see them being used in specialized cases, like mechanics or policing, but it will take a generational change for the average person to wear them.
AR glasses; once the tech has advanced far enough to be reasonably inexpensive and mature enough to show actual benefit to most people, these things are gonna take off like nothing else since the smartphone. Chances are they'll BE the next smartphone.
When that's gonna happen, who can say. They obviously need to work seamlessly with regular eyeglasses to reach mass-market, and that's going to be a real challenge, technically as well as styling-wise. Less than ten years is a very very safe bet though I would think, a bit too safe to really be credible. It'd be like saying we'll probably build a permanent outpost on the moon within the next thousand years. It's "duh" territory. Of course we will - assuming we don't blow ourselves up first in WWIII over oil or other natural resources. AR glasses in less than five years? HMMM. A lot of stuff is perpetually stuck in the "three to five years" timespan and never really get any closer. And still, five years is A LONG TIME in the high-tech consumer industry. Proper AR glasses will likely appear on the market in five years at most, but if the breakthrough happens before then I can't even begin to speculate.
Smartphones existed for many years before someone 'did it right' and caused them to take off. Chances are someone will do AR glasses, screw up in some way and the movement will flounder for a while until someone eventually gets it right and becomes dominant in the market for at least a couple years.
When that's gonna happen, who can say. They obviously need to work seamlessly with regular eyeglasses to reach mass-market, and that's going to be a real challenge, technically as well as styling-wise. Less than ten years is a very very safe bet though I would think, a bit too safe to really be credible. It'd be like saying we'll probably build a permanent outpost on the moon within the next thousand years. It's "duh" territory. Of course we will - assuming we don't blow ourselves up first in WWIII over oil or other natural resources. AR glasses in less than five years? HMMM. A lot of stuff is perpetually stuck in the "three to five years" timespan and never really get any closer. And still, five years is A LONG TIME in the high-tech consumer industry. Proper AR glasses will likely appear on the market in five years at most, but if the breakthrough happens before then I can't even begin to speculate.
Smartphones existed for many years before someone 'did it right' and caused them to take off. Chances are someone will do AR glasses, screw up in some way and the movement will flounder for a while until someone eventually gets it right and becomes dominant in the market for at least a couple years.
Wait, he said that AR is much farther off than VR. VR could be done today with the proper incentives and will benefit from the push to 4K with the desire to have higher density displays everywhere.
Also, social norms are a weird thing. You transport a person from 20 years ago into today and they'll wonder why a group of people spend so much time on their phone instead of talking to each other. They'll think the world is full of a bunch of hermit crabs or something.
You should really take this to the threads where it have been discussed in detail. You are missing so many things that i get the feeling this is based on your very limited view only.
But gratz on a new angle on why Physical distribution is needed.. poor people!
Nobody is suggesting no matter the noise on the topic such a thing because people are conservative.
People think that Google is stupid enough to rebadge a GoogleTV into a console and hope for a miracle. I see no point in discussing such a statement be it Google or Apple they are not stupid, they are pretty much aware that neither GoogleTV or Apple Tv are console.
A new GoogleTv or Apple TV would not be a console either if it indeed can't push a wide panel of games.
I think that you are missing the point, it is not about casual or core gaming, by the way I don't like those terms especially when they refer to gamers instead of games, the point is pretty much like in hardware about unification, With pretty conservative specs for this gen of console, the point where you can have a device, a cheap one, that fits all needs, is close.
It could a PC (/windows based) or something else. Pretty much anything "windows" comes with a premium less and less people are willing to pay.
Actually I bring PC into the picture purposefully because pretty much PC gamers are also in denial about the +100Watts GPU cards, with the next gen consoles acting as a pretty low ceiling on perfs, as soon as you will see APU (kaveri +gddr5 would be pretty close already) with sane performances it will be interesting to see what the average steam user does.
I think to some extend people be it PC gamers with a focus on hardware or console gamers are attached to objects, they are interested in a "GPU" as a card, a "console" as a sort of set-up box. They are willing to dismiss anything that doesn't fit in that format even though it were to provides the functionality of a discrete gpu or a console.
I think Carmack clearly see further than that, competent but cheap hardware is to be available sooner than later, Google is in a special position thanks to Android massive user base.
Nvidia is wiling to follow suit it is pretty obvious, by the way they are trying to push core games as an advertizement for their tegra line. Things a re changing.
Anyway I don't want to go into the details about business model, paywall vs no paywall, price and sucky economy, devs costs, and so on.
Time will tell I've time, I hope I''ll make it till at least 60
The Tegra line is irrelevant if they want to compete for the core gamers ... yes, they are getting more powerful but they make compromises which are simply not appropriate for a console (Tegra is more expensive for the same performance as the non-mobile architectures). If you want to make a small passively cooled device Tegra might be a fit, but that would be irrelevant to core gamers.
Competent low cost hardware is available, but in the end to compete for the core gamers you need a box at least the size of the PS4 (might as well use an optical drive, being the odd one out in this respect will not improve your competitiveness) with the power consumption of next gen consoles and the cost of next gen consoles. It can run android, but in the end it would just be a next gen console ... a relatively high priced device, with a relatively large foot print and audible active cooling ... and I don't think Google wants to compete there. Apple really doesn't want to compete there either, consoles are just so unfashionable for lots of reasons ... it doesn't fit their image.
Sure in a couple of years they could compete with the next gen consoles with a smaller box ... but don't hold your breath (process technology has hit a roadblock because EUV is a complete clusterfuck).
Competent low cost hardware is available, but in the end to compete for the core gamers you need a box at least the size of the PS4 (might as well use an optical drive, being the odd one out in this respect will not improve your competitiveness) with the power consumption of next gen consoles and the cost of next gen consoles. It can run android, but in the end it would just be a next gen console ... a relatively high priced device, with a relatively large foot print and audible active cooling ... and I don't think Google wants to compete there. Apple really doesn't want to compete there either, consoles are just so unfashionable for lots of reasons ... it doesn't fit their image.
Sure in a couple of years they could compete with the next gen consoles with a smaller box ... but don't hold your breath (process technology has hit a roadblock because EUV is a complete clusterfuck).
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