Skal man tro John Carmack, spilhistoriens måske mest indflydelsesrige programmør, er der stadig masser af kræfter tilbage i de gamle konsoller, man ikke har udnyttet endnu.
Det siger han i et interview med Wired, i anledning af at det første Doom fyldte 20 år i denne uge.
Carmack fortæller, at han på nogle måder er ked af skiftet til en ny konsolgeneration, netop som vi er ved at have fuld forståelse for hardwaren i den gamle. Omvendt kan han godt se hvorfor folk er ivrige efter at komme videre.
Even to this day, I struggle a little bit with that; there's so much you can still do on the previous console generation. The 360 and PS3 are far from tapped out in terms of what a developer could do with them, but the whole world's gonna move over towards next-gen and high-end PCs and all these other things. Part of me still frets a little bit about that, where just as you fully understand a previous generation, you have to put it away to kind of surf forward on the tidal wave of technology that's always moving.
That's something that we've struggled with in every generation. And now I at least know enough to recognize that some of my internal feelings or fondness for technology that I understand or have done various things with usually has to be put aside. Because data has shown over the decades that that's usually not as important as you think it is.
Carmack forlod Id Software for ganske nyligt, og arbejder nu fuldtid hos virtual reality-folkene Oculus Rift. I interviewet fortæller han også, at han mener at Ids "when it's done"-filosofi har skadet studiet i det lange løb, og antyder at tingene måske står værre til hos Id Software end vi troede.