Carmack "not all that excited" about new hardware

The next batch of consoles won't bring a heck of a lot to the table, according to respected technical wizard and id Software luminary John Carmack.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Carmack said current hardware is already sufficient to meet most HD gaming needs.

"When people ask how tapped out is the current console generation, PCs are 10 times as powerful but you really are still not technically limited," he said.

"Any creative vision that a designer could come up with, we can do a pretty good job representing on current generation and certainly on PC. In many ways I am not all that excited about the next generation."

Carmack said the next set of consoles will allow developers to "do everything we want to do now, with the knobs turned up".

"If you take a current game like Halo which is a 30 hertz game at 720p; if you run that at 1080p, 60 frames with high dynamic frame buffers, all of a sudden you've sucked up all the power you have in the next-generation," he predicted.

"It will be what we already have, but a lot better. You will be able to redesign with a focus on D11, but it will not really change anyone's world."

The leap in quality won't be like the sudden jump from flat graphics to 3D, Carmack said. The legendary engineer seemed far more excited about the possibilities of the head-mounted display tech he was showing at E3.

"[Next generation graphics] won't be like putting yourself in the virtual world. All the little things you can do on that, such as playing an audio cue over here, and turning your attention to that. That will be more of the discontinuous step like we've had with first going to 3D or first using a mouse," he said.