John Carmack: Xbox One and PS4 are "close" in hardware capabilities

[Half Monk 697]

id Software's head programmer John Carmack gave his opinion today about the upcoming Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, at least in terms of their hardware performance, as part of his annual QuakeCon keynote address. While on paper, the PS4 would seem to have the edge on the Xbox One, Carmack believes the two consoles are actually neck-and-neck in their capabilities.

 

 

During the keynote, which was streamed live on Twitch.tv, the man who created the game engines behind Doom, Quake and the most recent id Software game Rage, stated, "It's almost amazing how close they are in capabilities, how common they are. The capabilities they give are essentially the same."

 

However, Carmack doesn't seem to care for Microsoft's Kinect hardware, which will be bundled with every Xbox One. He said, "I think Kinect still has some fundamental limitations with the latency and frame rate on it." He compared Kinect to Apple's one button mouse device, with Carmack saying that most people really want more than one button. He said, "Kinect is sort of like a zero button mouse with a lot of latency on it."

 

Speaking of Kinect, Carmack stated that some of the concerns about the Kinect as a possible tool for spying will be forgotten in the long run, much like how people have basically lived with the fact that their smartphone has a GPS locator inside. As far as the controversy over the Xbox One's now defunct DRM policies, Carmack said, "I think the witch hunt was a little bit unjustified." He feels that the game industry is moving toward that all-digital content future and when that happens " ... it will be good for us in general."

 

id Software is currently working on the next game in the Doom series, but there's no word on when that will be released.