John Carmack interview in new GI (Thoughts on PS3 & X360) #1
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There's a multiple page interview in the new Game Informer (Crackdown for Xbox360 from the GTA creator is the cover story). They talk about Doom for Mobile, the Doom movie, and more. Here's an excerpt of the interesting stuff...
We'd heard that one of the very first PS3 dev kits showed up at your door. Any truth to that?
Yes, we have PS3 dev kits here.
How are those working out?
The Microsoft dev kits for the Xbox 360 are much nicer. I'll say that. We do intend that on our next project, we are intentionally targeting all three platforms - PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. I've actually just this last week started moving my development focus from the PC to the Xbox 360. Microsoft has done a spectacular job of making that an easy move. You get to use the same tools, the same environment, the debugging is great, and the performance analysis tools are great.
In regards to the PS3 dev kit, has it been a big challenge from a technological standpoint?
It's actually not going to be that bad in the larger scheme of things. If you look at the previous generation, the PS2 was not a good platform for developers to work on. From a hardware standpoint, the PS3 is a lot nicer, because it essentially has a PC graphics accelerator in it and it has simple memory. I think Microsoft made a better choice with the processor technology than Sony did. But, to a first approximation, they are both plenty capable systems. I was much more down on the PS2 than I am on the PS3. I definitely did prefer the Xbox over the PS2 by a wide margin. I think I prefer the 360 over the PS3 by a less wide margin.
What are your thoughts about the potential of these two systems in the overall market?
I don't like how the hype is always so ridiculous at new console launches. Because the truth is, by the time any of these things ship, you will be able to buy a higher end PC. It won't have better cost performance - the value won't be as good, but for the people that try to make it sound like the PS3 is going to be an order of magnitude better than anything else, it's just not true.
http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=64061
