Carmack: Mobile Devices Will Replace Consoles Soon

July 9, 2011 - 3:56pm

Speaking to Industry Gamers, id Software's John Carmack expressed his opinion that mobile devices will soon become more powerful than the current generation of consoles and that they might replace them sooner or later.

"It's amazing to think that when we started Rage, iOS didn't exist. There was no iPhone," Carmack pondered. "All of that has happened just in the space of one project development timeline. And that's a little scary when you think about it, because major landscape change could be happening underneath our feet as we work on these large scale projects. And we're going to be doing everything we can to constrain our projects more to not take so long."

Carmack then admitted that he has noticed that more and more of his friends and colleagues are spending less time with their consoles and more time with their iPad games. However, he noted that iPad games are "a different experience... a diversion rather than a destination."

But the increased mobile devices power is still worrisome to AAA developers such as id Software. "Could the bottom drop out on the triple A market because everyone's playing Angry Birds? It doesn't seem to be happening. The numbers don't show that. We're selling more big titles than ever before, despite having all of these other platforms out there. So it looks like it's parallel growth rather than one stealing from the other."

"But platform wise, you could certainly imagine a future where, instead of having your console, you have your mobile device and it talks to your TV and when you want the experience on your big screen with the surround sound coming out of there, it's still on the same device."

To prove his point, Carmack noted that the iPad 2 is nearly half as powerful as the Xbox 360 right now, which means that its 1st or 2nd successor would surpass it within 2 years.

Comments

no way

If thats the case, then after 15 years, why do they still make desktop PCs and not just all laptops??? Winbook tried that already and it didnt take. Hasteful statement

Always a bigger fish

Consoles won't ever be replaced by portable devices of any kind. Why? Because every advance made to a portable device can be subsequently applied to a console, only with less (or no) considerations made for size, power consumption or heat production. It's the same deal with the auto industry - every "V8 killing" advancement inevitably winds up being applied to the V8 and it lives on..... Oh, and an iPad 2 is definitely nowhere near half the power of a 360 - I've seen first-hand an iPad2 crippled by a simple scaling, rotating blit which an ET6000 could handle 15 years ago.

Consoles will die?

They said the same thing in 1983/84...we also thought the same thing in the mid-'90s when handhelds got more and more advanced.

Sorry Carmack, but a handheld screen is never going to compete with a 60" television set, not unless said handheld can properly connect to the aforementioned TV.

I still think Sony should make a television with a Playstation built into it...now THAT would be revolutionary.

John Fartcrack

John Carmack can BLOW IT OUT HIS ASS HOLE! He makes a pointless argument. So what if hand helds are catching up to consoles. Does that mean that everyone that owns a console is going to throw them out? NO. He of all people should know that all tech development work in cycles. Devs are pushing the tech they have now as far as possible before having to end the tech cycle. For PCs the tech cycle is usually about 5 years. For consoles it could be around 6 or 7 years. Thats why a PC will always be better than a console because it will have new tech before consoles will. PCs already have quad core chips. Consoles still run on single chips. I assume the PS4 will have multi core chips in it. So by the time hand helds surpass consoles in tech, the consoles will be starting a new tech cycle, and the vicious cycle continues, pardon the pun. So Carmack is basically talking about shit that everyone already knows and must think that everyone is retaded. WELL FUCK YOU CARMACK! YOUR NOT A GOD! By the looks of it RAGE will be similar to Borderlands. YOU HEAR THAT CARMACK! Quit stealing other devs creations. So much for originality. RAGE better be good or i will throw my console out the window. YOU HEAR THAT CARMACK! RAGE better be good and not be the same old shit just different pile.RAGE better be an FPS/RPG/RTS/ARPG all roled into one!

dude what the fuck are you on

dude what the fuck are you on about ? i refuring to some dudes comment and your comparing my comments on a 360 to a ps3 ? 360 has smoother games, even it has slightly less gfx power, ull find games on 360 dont suffer on frame rate like on a ps3 games do, and 360 games way more better, if i want gfx and gameplay id get a pc, wait i do, so fuck ps3 shit, it so bad the sales are pittyful to the 360's market, all ps3 is good for is being hacked to fuck and their network is forever being hacked cuz sony are robbing bastards and deserve it

Holy shit, that's about the

Holy shit, that's about the longest run-on sentence I've ever seen. 1st party PS3 games (IE, MGS4) run amazing by the way. It's the poor quality porting jobs that provide whatever issues you're talking about in that sentence.

no way

dont matter how powerful handheld become, consoles will just be million times more powerful, and consoles will neve die, there too popular, id for one would never play games like a boring fucker on a phone, consoles may be limited to not taking it about on a train, but you get better and more powerful games as technology improves for consoles, example 460 console will be loads more powerful than 360 console, and worth every penny too, i have a 360 and a top end pc rig too, id for one wouldnt settle for anything less, carmak makes a good point in the sence ofhow far mobile devices have come, but to compare to a console for power is stupid, he is like microsoft for comments making, dumb'ass's , id love to see unreal 4 engine on an ipad2 hhahaa, a the joys of life

Both of you are wrong.

Both of you are wrong. Carmack made a good point which neither of you addressed. The power of smartphones and tablets increased at an amazing pace in the last few years. If this keeps up a console should be surpassed by handhelds a couple of years after its released and consoles are supposed to last around 6 years if not more. Console makers wont release consoles more often because its costly and without backward compatibility (which is present in both android and ios) devs would simply quit consoles altogether as AAA games usually take that much time or more to be made assuming the engine being used was ready from the start. As for the creativity part, who cares? The guy is talking about tech here and he is best known for his skills as a programmer not a game designer he's all tech, creativity is hardly a factor here.

"The only reason why consoles

"The only reason why consoles have a life period of about 6 years is because of the initial development that goes into it's parts" That's sort of the whole point, smartphones and tablets take less than half of that period and with their power increasing so fast they can surpass a newly released console in a couple of years. The ipad isn't really a good example of the time it takes to make a tablet because it was started before the iphone and shelved when people at apple realized they could do the same thing on a smartphone, only to be resumed years later. As a better example, the ipad2 was released one year after the ipad and had twice the processing power. So if we start out with a handheld that has half of a new consoles power it would indeed take two years to surpass said console.

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