@ssj12: I'd have to look at those interviews hehe. Not doubting that though.

Regarding physics processors, how is he wrong? These dedicated physics cards aren't taking off. That's what he predicted.

"Carmack, like Intel, Nvidia and DAAMIT, appears to think that using GPU and CPU capacity to handle this stuff is a much better idea than requiring an extra add-in card."

because the industry is taking an either or approach to it. The nVidia drivers will allow either a dedicated physx card or all physics calculations to be done on the GPU. Like I said, nVidia will be bundling the Physx Card with the GTX 2x0 soon but offering the driver which allows for either or.

So similar to what he said about multi-threaded/multi-core processors, Physics processing in an form is just taking a while to take off but it will.

@ssj12: I guess we'll see, but I'm not betting on these dedicated PPUs really taking off. You're right that nVidia is covering all their bases though.

The Xbox has a 733MHz CPU and a superior GPU. The iPhone has a 620MHz processor underclocked to 412 MHz and a 3D GPU that's really just there so that the iPhone has a 3D GPU.

The iPhone has twice as much RAM.

Naturally, it's a tradeoff. As the Xbox will be running ONLY games when it's running, while the iPhone will be running a number of additional things behind the scenes, I think it's safe to say the Xbox is far more powerful.

Whether that power is as easy to utilize as the iPhone's, though, is an entirely different story.

John Carmack may not be the best game developer/designer, but he is still among the best game programmers in the world. When it comes to predictions about technology there are few developers who have made nearly as many predictions and been as accurate as John Carmak. Now, being that the PSP and Nintendo DS are over 3 years old it shouldn't be surprising that the iPhone would be more powerful than them both combined; and with how close the PSP is to the performance of the Dreamcast or PS2 it should be surprising that the iPhone is similar in processing power to the PS2 (or possibly the XBox).

Now, a lot of people probably try to take this performance analysis to make assumptions about the types of games that should be made for the iPhone; or make assumptions about whether this device is suited to game development. Personally, I would say that although the iPhone has the processing power to support similar games to the PS2/XBox I think that would be a mistake. In my opinion, most people who will play games on their iPhone will be looking to use it in a similar fashion to how people currently use their phone games; they will be looking to play something quick and easy to pass a little time while they're on the train or waiting for something. In other words, you will probably sell far more copies of a game like Bejewled than a game like Quake.

there you go, you seemed to have mistyped your first sentence. I fixed it for you.

sadly n-gage games until now dont use the graphic chips

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUOqR_2sACk

here is a demo of nokia n-gage platform is capable for.

the hardware is used in lots of nseries devices- from n95-n82- even the 6220 classic

@ssj12: iD's old games are great, but they weren't really designed by Carmack. Romero, McGee, Petersen and all those guys are the ones who made Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake great games, design-wise. After Quake it was pretty much downhill, gameplay-wise.

wait what? Doom 3 is scary as hell and fun. Quake 3 Arena is awesome multiplayer, and Quake 4 is pretty good for today's standards for FPSs. *looks at copy of Halo PC, looks at copy of Quake 4* oh ya, definitely pretty good for today's standards.

@ssj12: I love Q3A, but it just felt like an evolution of the previous stuff (although a damn good one at that). Doom 3 was designed by Tim Willits, not Carmack either.

iD's old games, however, were revolutionary. It was the magic of having great technologists and designers together which made iD one of my favorite game developers. Nowadays I can't seem to care that much about their games anymore.