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Romero Predicts Uncertain Future For Consoles
by David Jenkins [PC, Console/PC]
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April 10, 2007
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Controversial industry veteran John Romero has predicted that current high-end consoles, such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, will cease to exist in their current form in a new interview with website Adrenaline Vault.
“Right now MMOs, mobile and PC episodic are really polarizing into the newest most important segments in gaming”, said Romero in the interview. “Next-gen console is big but its future isn’t too bright, with the emergence of cheap PC multi-core processors and the big change the PC industry will go through during the next 5 years to accommodate the new multi-core-centric hardware designs.
“My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and Xbox 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether”, he added. “The hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the whole house over Wi-Fi, even the video signal.”
The industry veteran, who is best known as a PC game designer, was more optimistic about the future of the Wii, saying: “The Wii has the perfect design for a console that doesn’t pretend to be a PC and is geared more toward casual gamers than hardcore gamers.”
Romero was one of the co-founders of iD Software and a designer on classic titles such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. He later co-founded the ill-fated Ion Storm studio, where he worked on the infamous Daikatana before founding his own mobile games company, Monkeystone, and then joining Midway to work on Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows.
Most recently Romero founded California Bay Area studio Slipgate Ironworks. The developer is known to be working on a new massively multiplayer game, but Romero revealed no details of the project in his latest interview, indicating only that “we’re creating something that’s the first of its kind and we want to be first to market with it.”
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