You might be thrilled with next gen—er, current gen. But John Carmack, ex-id Software star programmer and Oculus Rift guru, isn't yet. He thinks we can still do more with last gen.


"The 360 and PS3 are far from tapped out in terms of what a developer could do with them," he said, speaking to Wired on the occasion of Doom's 20th anniversary. "There's so much you can still do on the previous console generation. 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."


Carmack brought the topic up when asked about id Software's technically demanding past games—both Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, for example, required PCs to be upgraded to faster 286 and 386 processors, respectively. The decision to leave users of low-end systems behind, Carmack said, is something he "struggles with to this day."

Kotaku commentariat, what do you think? Did the industry move on too soon? We'd love to hear your thoughts below.

John Carmack Q&A [Wired, via GamesIndustry International]

Top image courtesy of XoZeN@flickr .