John Carmack: PS3 And 360 Are “Far From Being Tapped Out”

Many gamers and developers were anxious to start a new generation, but one iconic designer says we actually could've waited.

During a recent Wired interview , John Carmack, id Software co-founder and partly responsible for the legendary Doom and Quake franchises, said the current-gen consoles still had plenty of juice left.

"…there’s so much you can still do on the previous console generation. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are far from tapped out in terms of what a developer could do with them, but the whole world’s gonna move over towards next-gen and high-end PCs and all these other things. Part of me still frets a little bit about that, where just as you fully understand a previous generation, you have to put it away to kind of surf forward on the tidal wave of technology that’s always moving."

That being said, Carmack added that he feels comfortable with the current technology, which is part of the reason he doesn't want to part with it. That's probably a very common feeling among game developers: The new hardware is all sorts of cool, but that means we have to start learning again. Yeah, well, we figure everyone benefits from that, right?

As for the PS3 and 360, I'm willing to bet the PS3 wasn't tapped out but the 360…? Yeah, that thing was done. Sorry, John.