id Software’s John Carmack has weighed in on the subject of next-generation consoles, believing Sony and Microsoft’s new platforms will be roughly ten times as powerful as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Speaking with Eurogamer, Carmack reckons the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 will arrive on the market in just a few years and will stick around for at least a decade before running out of steam.
"The next-generation will be here soon, a couple of years," said Carmack."It’ll be another ten times as powerful as this [PS3, Xbox 360]. I’d be surprised if that doesn’t last over a decade before people wind up saying, well, we’ve really tapped out everything you could possibly do on there."
Furthermore, the industry legend feels that companies will be in for a tough time in demonstrating exactly what new platforms are capable of in order to convince punters to fork out for the new hardware.
"The better games get the harder you have to go to give a delta people care about. That’s going to be a challenge for the next-generation of consoles, to show what pack-in title is going to look so much more awesome than what you get on the current ones that people want to go spend $300 on a new console.”
"They’ll be able to do it on the next generation, but it’s going to be much harder,” he added.