Carmack: PS4 will be first to market

John Carmack, technical director at id Software, has predicted that Sony will be the first platform holder to make a move into the next generation of gaming hardware – though he doesn’t expect any new machines to be announced in the near future.

“The whole jockeying for who's going to release the first next-gen console is very interesting and pretty divorced from the technical side of things,” Carmack told CD-Action, as spotted by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry.

“Whether Sony wants to jump the gun to prevent the same sort of 360 lag from happening to them again seems likely.

“As developers, we would really like to see this generation stretch as long as possible. We'd like to see it be quite a few more years before the next-gen consoles comes out, but I suspect one will end up shipping something earlier rather than later.”

Carmack also predicted that at least one of the successors to Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii will ship without the capacity for optical media.

“I think that Xbox Live and the advent of that and the App Store with the iPhone are wonderful signs of the future of digital distribution,” he added.

“I think there's a decent chance that one of the next-gen consoles will be without optical media. The uptake rates of people who have broadband connects surprised everyone this generation. It's higher than what the core publishers and even the first party people expected.”


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