Chris Hecker: "Sony and Microsoft are About to Screw Your Game Design"
Hecker took a more technical look at the industry. He says that 'back in the day,' game code was balanced: you had equal emphasis on graphics, physics, and gameplay. He demonstrated this in a Power Point presentation showing a geeky skinny guy. The way the industry has evolved, game code has been very lopsided: a picture of a modern game showed a skinny guy with one massive, muscular arm representing graphics.
He observes that game engine code is very straightforward, whereas gameplay code is typically sloppy, adjustable, and "crazy." This hasn't been a problem in recent console generations, for hardware reasons. Recent processors allow out-of-order code execution, so that "even crappy code" would work fast. But the next-generation Xbox and Sony's Cell processors are all in-order execution chips. That's great for high-speed graphics, but it makes fast gameplay code MUCH harder to write.
Hecker didn't provide any solutions, he just wanted to vent. Maybe Nintendo will come up with something better. Or maybe developers should all go back to making PC games. He also suggested crying. But Hecker didn't have the answers.