Carmack: Mobile tech to surpass consoles in 2 years
id Software's technical director believes mobile's supremacy is "unquestionable"
id Software's John Carmack believes that mobile technology will soon overtake consoles, potentially replacing them for users seeking a more convenient gaming experience.
The company's interest in mobile development has grown exponentially in the last few years, and Carmack, in particular, seems energised by the rapid pace of progress in the sector.
"It's amazing to think that when we started Rage, iOS didn't exist. There was no iPhone. All of that has happened just in the space of one project development timeline," Carmack told IndustryGamers.
"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."
Major landscape change could be happening underneath our feet as we work on these large scale projects
John Carmack, id Software
Carmack's comments are supported by recent data from Nielsen suggesting that games were the most popular app category over the last 30 days. The report also indicates that 93 percent of app downloaders are willing to pay for games, with iOS gamers now spending almost twice as much time playing as the average mobile user.
Nielsen's findings seem consistent with Carmack's own experience: id's older developers rarely use their Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s for gaming any more, and increasingly regard the iPad as their platform of choice.
"It's a different experience, though... It's a diversion rather than a destination. And while they're certainly powerful enough now to make destination titles, that's still not really what's doing particularly well there. But it certainly is a worry."
In Carmack's view, the sales figures don't support the theory that mobile blockbusters like Angry Birds will erode the popularity of AAA console titles, and he suggests that both will continue to grow in parallel.
However, he does invoke a possible future where mobile phones could be linked to televisions and serve the same function as a console. What's more, he believes that mobile technology will be powerful enough to do so, "within a very short time."
"People have exaggerated the relative powers - the iPad2 is not more powerful than the 360. It's still a factor of a couple weaker. But the fact that it's gotten that close that fast - that means that almost certainly, 2 years from now, there will be mobile devices more powerful than what we're doing all these fabulous games on right now."
A key factor in mobile replacing consoles could be convenience, and the same is true of cloud-based services like OnLive, even if OnLive doesn't exist when that future finally arrives.
"It's not at all clear that the existing ones will survive long enough for that future to get there, but I think that it's almost unquestionable that, if you look 5, 10 years in the future, that type of delivery - even though it's not going to necessarily be the same graphical quality of latency quality, but a whole lot of convenience can make up for [what's lacking]. So I do wonder if the mobile platforms might get more and more of that going for them, where it provides a good enough experience for [most people]."
But except manufacturers start delivering handheld devices with fire proof asbestos gloves, the PC will retain an edge, simply because it can push more wattage ithrough all its processors.
@Klaus Maybe you will have some alternative cooling solution like a "dock" or something with external power supply, and certain apps could require that to run at full details (just a supposition :))
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Mihai Cozma on 8th July 2011 2:59pm
Again, great insight!
This way, gamers who want a more "core" experience can still do so. It would be easy to have a Joypad / Joystick also connect via bluetooth to the Smartphone, so that a user can play a game like an FPS using a pad. When you're done, simply put your phone back in your pocket.
Interestingly, from a game design perspective, this could mean that we have games created that support a full-on core console-like experience mixed with a pick-up and play / bite-sized experience too. Imagine during the day using your Smartphone to organise your inventory, assemble new weapons and so forth, and then when getting home using the fruits of your labor on the battlefield in an FPS or Hack and Slash.
Sorry, but this will always be the big issue at the end of the day, period. Having more power, speed and flashier graphics are all fine, but once you make people slaves to any sort of online component, you're asking for trouble.
Anyway, I'm old and I like most of my games on a bigger (HOME) screen so I can actually SEE what's going on. As much as I love my handhelds (and no, I don't own an iPad, which isn't a handheld), I like sitting on the couch or up in bed relaxing more than I do walking down the street stepping in dog shit and avoiding open manholes and traffic trying to play Pissed Off Bovines XVIII...
Interestingly enough you cite "Wii U" - which isn't out yet - when talking of streaming to TV while iPad2 is already capable of doing exactly that with Apple TV - doing it without "additional peripherals" is just a matter of "shared standards".
So, to reprise what Carmack's saying: iPad2 ALREADY streams to your TV... and Wii U just got way too late on that and on many other things. :)
The real question, I think, is whether the large demand outside of gaming for iPads and other mobile devices will result in a wider distribution of said devices than of the next generation of consoles. That could lead to a larger market for mobile games over console games.
Moving the environment off the limited mobile device and onto an HD TV will be important. Whoever gets their mobile devices to connect (audio, video, controllers, etc) and can crank the horsepower required for a "destination" game will truly have made a difference. My opinion of course. Today, packing a 360 around is a pain. It's big, bulky, requires various controllers (some requiring connections of their own), a wired or wireless internet connection, etc. And did I mention optical media in most cases? I love PC and console gaming, but I clearly see the trend here.
Console and PC gamers will keep using those platforms. Partly because it's where the hard core stuff is but more importantly the interface between man and machine makes a huge difference. A racing game may become sophisticated and look great on some pad but unless I can hook up a steering wheel, pedals and gear shift then it will lack behind what I have on console/PC. Similar with almost any other game týpe.
If we include items like Vita and so on in "mobile tech" then the picture is somewhat different, but those are consoles already only they might gain more and more "mobile tech" functionality, but I hardly see them become as mainstream as smartphones and pads. Average user simply have no desire for shoulder triggers, analog controls and all that since they clutter up the interface (and cost money).
You could set your phone down on the coffee table & have it stream to your TV, pull out a game controller/keyboard & mouse and play games/do you computing easily.
Finally, if the technology is already so powerful, simple and small why do we need cloud computing?
i agree with him, to a large extent. there are some pretty powerful mobile devices coming in the near future. what tips the scales in their favor is not just the fact that they're able to pump at a pretty respectable amount of game, but that they work as portable devices - and with no compromises at that. I've heard of some people completely abandoning their PCs for an iPad already. What's to say that consoles aren't next?
it's possible there may be another nes- or (original)playstation-level leap in consoles, where the entire market just changes completely. it might happen, and that could revive things a bit; or it may be that the rapidly advancing mobile space is that leap.
Power usage: It seems a lot of people don't realize how important low power consumption has been to consoles for more than a decade now. Consoles, being consumer living-room devices, are smaller than PCs with less cooling capability, and this has been reflected in their design for more than a decade now. In 2001, when IBM first sat down to design the CPU to be used in the PS3 (and, in modified form, in the Xbox 360), one of the three primary design criteria was power usage.
Processing power: Consoles will always have the capability of staying well ahead of mobile devices in this area, since they always have more and cheaper power and cooling, and less need for miniaturisation. But the real question is, will they? Especially given the long release cycles they have compared to mobile devices, even if the next generation of consoles does spring ahead as far as this generation did from the last, it's not unreasonable that mobile devices will have caught up by half-way through the next cycle. Given how the cost of development rises as consoles become more powerful, though, and the clear consumer acceptance of "last-generation" processing power demonstrated by the Wii, I can certainly see how we might see consoles improving at a much slower pace in the future. (Is the Wii U a sign of that?)
Controls are a dead easy fix, at least when you're at home. There's no reason that my Bluetooth PS3 controller couldn't work just as well with a mobile device rendering to my TV as it does with my PS3. (In fact, this can be done now with the PSP Go.) But mobile is coming up to speed on that, at least in some instances. The Vita, for example, is equivalent in number of buttons and joysticks to a PS3 controller (if you use the rear touchpad to emulate two more shoulder buttons), though it appears to be missing pressure sensitivity on the face buttons and L2/R2. (That last loss is quite annoying when it comes to things like driving in games.)
OK, this is an issue to an extent on PC, but at least the hardware evolution there is more organic, not reliant on one company revealing the details, and in the PC market you have a large percentage of people with slightly older, or mid range, hardware anyway. Even then, it's taken until now for the technical advantages of decent PC hardware to show this generation, the familiarity with Xbox and Playstation hardware has allowed developers to push it far further than if they had to fix it to work on new hardware every 9 months, which compensates for a while for the fact it is slightly dated a few years later.
Of course, mobile hardware could slow down, as much as this would fly against the policies of companies that traditionally make all their money on hardware, but then the hardware would not be catching up technically with consoles.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Andrew Goodchild on 9th July 2011 7:46am
I also find it slightly sad that consoles are still considered toys with an expected "low" price point. The notion that a gaming console should ideally be around $300 is a much bigger threat to console gaming than the mobile devices themselves. People are fine with paying $500 for an iDevice but gamers shit their pants when a console comes in at that price. Hopefully it can change as gamers gets older and doesn't have to rely on parents or low income but Sony tried to up the status with the PS3 (premium price, premium hardware) but that sort of backfired. I think that experience might have a negative impact on the next generation, which if it doesn't deliver could be the last proper home console gen. And that could lead to the end of big budget game productions.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jan Almqvist on 9th July 2011 11:13am
Look how much effort developers put into pushing the X360 and PS3. And look at how gamers fight over the most minute nuance of multiplatform games. Do you think this group of content providers and consumers are really going to want to go backwards in hardware performance?
By the time the mobile space equates X360/PS3 performance a new generation of home consoles will be out and the cycle stars anew.
1/ Unless there is a major breakthrough in battery technology, power consumption/battery life will be the limiting factor for mobile devices (if it isn't already).
2/ Consoles have more price pressure, as they are typically bought up-front: where as mobile devices are typically bought on contract (and paid off over several years). The mobile devices can be much more expensive.
3/ Consoles only get rev'd every 4-6 years, whereas new mobile devices are coming out every few months. As you get towards the end of a console cycle, mobile devices may well be more powerful - but IMO its very unlikely to happen when a *new* console is released.
don't forget that when your magic battery pumps all that energy into the mobile device, the resulting heat has to go somewhere. Even if an engineer could shrink a 8000mA/h laptop battery to 1/10th its current size, you still could not put a current GPU in any handheld device.
P = CV²*f !!!
Thermal design is the key limiting factor of any computer. It is the limit when companies build server farms and calculate how much air conditioning they can afford. It is the limit when people build a PC. It surely is the limit when Microsoft wants to avoid another generation of Red Ring of Death. Thermal design is the limit if you want a mobile device which does not melt the skin in your hands.
So no matter how good a handheld chip gets, the chips which are build with actively cooled, fist sized chunks of heat absorbing metal in mind, will always have a giant advantage.
If you want one environment where Onlive really makes sense, then it is mobile devices hooked to low ping next generation mobile networks. You would not necessarily do it to outsource the processing power to a remote location, you would do it to outsource the heat which is being generated in the process of rendering a 1080p game.
Also Mobile games could be a potential to gain users for future console versions, Imagine Angry birds (with extra features) released on console, its obvious it would get a huge response.
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You could imagine that with the addition of a nice racing wheel and pedals, for example, you'd be quite close to the full console experience. And with just a bit more power on your mobile devices, you could get a level of graphical compexity that's closing in on the console experience. Yes, I suppose the console could always pack more power into a larger specially built device. But as Carmack says, for many people, that extra flare and definition isn't necessarily that important.
I think mobile devices will be taking us to interesting places, and offering many non-hardcore gamers a great way to have quite a powerful and immersive gaming experience, without needing an extra specially built games machines or uber graphics card upgrade.
The convenience of having using this "all in one device", that you already own anyway, could be enough for many people.
One upside of this is that these devices can bring a whole bunch of "new gamers" into the market who may not otherwise be playing games at all.