What John Carmack Thinks Of PS4 (And PS1, Sega Saturn And N64)

In 2012, id’s John Carmack wasn’t terribly excited about what the next generation of consoles would offer. Even so, with the recent unveiling of the PS4, Carmack wasn’t shy about offering his assessment of Sony’s planned hardware.

“I can’t speak freely…” suggests id has a development kit (or at least has documentation and is under NDA), which isn’t unusual given the company’s position in the industry. id made its name on x86, so for Carmack, coding for the PS4 will be like putting on a pair of old boots… except those boots are extremely spacious and have little nitro-boosters on the sides.

Carmack also commented on multi-core, providing a much need dose of reality for those fixated on the PS4’s eight-core chip:

Much like the transition from single-core to dual-core and now dual-core to quad, the average game or application isn’t exactly thirsty for additional parallelism. If that’s the case, you’re better off with four, faster cores than eight slower ones.

As with the gamble Sony took with the PS3’s Cell processor, it’s clear the company is planning ahead — five years, at least — and if the performance trade-off for the added silicon is 25 per cent, rather than 50 per cent, then eight is indeed “wise”.

Carmack also responded to a question regarding the original PlayStation, providing us with this Twitter gem:

(“SGI” refers to Silicon Graphics, the company responsible for the N64’s Reality chip.)

I’m sure PS1 and Saturn fanboys would be rejoicing… if they’d had this ammunition 15-20 years ago. I suppose you could always get the T-shirt…

[clear] [Twitter, via CVG]

T-shirt template: JohnRinkenberg/Vecteezy.com


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