To say that John Carmack is well-known in the gaming industry would be a bit of an understatement. One of the pioneers of PC gaming and the father of FPS, Carmack has long been a stout supporter of PC gaming competing with consoles – until recently. In a brief interview with GamesRadar, Carmack touched upon Quake Live (a browser based Quake multiplayer game) and how its development reflects his new views on both PC and console gaming.
“As we look at it today, we really can’t justify doing a mainstream action-heavy title as a PC-only game,” said Carmack. “But there are still things that the PC does better than consoles.” What, exactly, can the PC still do better than consoles? Browser environments. Carmack recognizes that consoles are going to be the main focus of gaming’s future, and high-budget, graphically heavy action titles are going to do much better in console releases than PC. What consoles can’t do, however, is give gamers the opportunity to play their games wherever a PC is plugged into the Internet, which is pretty much anywhere. Have a computer connected to the Internet? Have an Internet browser? In John's future, that should be enough to start playing high-quality browser-based titles -- like his own upcoming Quake Live.
“Anywhere there’s a PC, if you’ve got a few minutes you can download Quake Live content and jump in and play your game. That’s one of the aspects of engineering that’s always appealed to me: trying to do the right thing in the right place. You don’t try and push something where it no longer belongs.”
Don’t be fooled into thinking Johnny boy is going to spend a lot of his time coming up with ways for Xbox 360 owners to blow things up in order to make quick money, either. “As far as future research, there’s interesting things where—as we look toward the next generation of console development—most of these technical trends will be preceded by earlier versions of them on the PC … we use the PC as an early sounding-ground for what the more dominant (sales-wise) consoles are going to eventually wind up being.” So while I have no doubt Carmack will find ways to further his console library (he does admit he finds it easier to develop for the 360 than PC), one of the fathers of PC gaming isn't ready to let his son walk on its own just quite yet.
November 30th, 2008 at 6:33 am
I think John Carmack should know his place in the food chain! if you google the future of consoles you find alot of experts that say consoles will die out. The xbox 360 has proud and the ps3 is a marketing failure. Sony is 3 billion dallors in the hole and so is micro softs. None of the real game devs want to work on the wii. They in fact are scared of it. Why don't you ask john to make a game on the wii.
Interplay went bankrupt and now epic games is next on the chupping block.
the japaese are so far behide in gaming tech and gaming Industry it's not funny. It is all because they fucsed too much on consoles!
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52982
here is the real truths, pc gaming is world wide
http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/20136-Gaming_in_Sweden_bigger_than_football_and_hockey
there is a major shift going on in the world
http://www.clickz.com/3631593
I would add more proof but 3 links is good enough.
By the way no console game can beat wow, linage,daiblo,starcraft,sims,guildwars,half life ets in sales