John Carmack: 360 and PS3 were 'far from tapped out'

[Licence]

Pemalite said:

 

Licence said:
Well, he is right, of course, but at some point it becomes cheaper to just let more powerful hardware do the work than to optimize the software. As a simple, entirely contrived example: If you have a program that needs 100Mb of RAM, but the PC you are running it on only has 50Mb of RAM, the question is:

Is it cheaper to redesign the program to work with 50Mb of RAM, or is it cheaper to just add 50Mb more RAM to your PC?

Another reason why better hardware do not necessarily translate into better software - the developers may not make the same investment in optimization on better hardware than they would've done previously.

You only have to optimise the game engine to do "more" only once, then you can use it for all your future games, depending on the game engine, that could be dozens of titles.

Of course, but if the gaming industry is anything like the business software industry I find myself in, that will only happen once the need for these enhanced features become crucial. If that need only arrives by the time the next-gen is on the horizon, then the developers will most likely let it wait.