August 11, 2009 - John Carmack believes Sony will be the first hardware company out of the next-gen console gate.

Id Software's founder, and long-time developer of everything Doom and Quake, says Sony won't want to spend another generation playing catch up to Microsoft's next iteration of the Xbox 360 (via Edge).

"The whole jockeying for who's going to release the first next gen console is very interesting and pretty divorced from the technical side of things," Carmack said. "Whether Sony wants to jump the gun to prevent the same sort of 360 lag from happening to them again seems likely.

Carmack also said he hopes the current console generation lasts as long as possible.

"As developers, we would really like to see this generation stretch as long as possible. We'd like to see it be quite a few more years before the next gen console comes out, but I suspect one will end up shipping something earlier rather than later," he added.

But will we see the end of disc media on game consoles? Carmack also added he wouldn't be surprised if one of the future consoles releases without an optical disc drive.

"I think that Xbox Live... the advent of that and the App Store with the iPhone are wonderful signs of the future of digital distribution," he said.

"I think there's a decent chance that one of the next gen consoles will be without optical media... the uptake rates of people who have broadband connects surprised everyone this generation. It's higher than what the core publishers and even the first party people expected."

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/101/1012811p1.html

what do you guys think?  Is Carmack going to be right on this?  He has always prefered the xbox brand (although id tech 5 is suppose to work better on the ps3). 

Carmack said it so yeah it'll happen.

confirmed?  carmack = god?

not sure if he will be right, i think if the ps3 doesnt sell what sony wants after their next price cut and slim version then maybe they will be the 1st out of the gate in the next gen wars. also the reason he likes the xbox brand more is because its more like a pc, which he has mostly only dev on, than a ps3 is. also their new engine is suppose to be fully capable on both systems as far as i know.

Is this Carmack make-believe too?

I would not be surprised if Sony did take the initiative next time around and release the PS4 before the next Xbox but i hope it isn't for a while yet!

ha.. sure.. if the ps4 is like "the wii is to the GC"...

overall it doesnt matter who launches first.. it matters who launches cheapest :)

Nope. I can see where he's coming from, but it won't happen for digital distribution reasons alone.  The PS3 is already set up for just that, in any case.  Its really the 360 that isn't there yet, since the HDD is not required, and doesn't even come in a decent enough size to allow for lots of DL content (yet).  You can slap a huge HDD in a PS3 whenever you want though, and it even doesn't void the warranty.

Sony is in the best position to do a "true" generational upgrade. The Cell is very easily upscaled, and devs who have sunk money into making PS3 engines could very easily make the step up to more muscle with a Cell successor -- giving a would-be "Cell2"-based PS4 a huge opening advantage, in terms of software.

MS cannot simply add more cores and upgrade -- its not that simple. The Cell is designed to scale in a near linear fashion, whereas a standard multi-core architecture cannot. They would normally have to let the 360 run its course, since its sorta unlikely that BC will be possible with the next iteration of MS' consoles... except... MS wants to be Nintendo.

The next XBox won't be much of an upgrade over the 360 (IMO), and thus, there's not a big issue in getting it out the door. A quad core PPC maybe, with a better GPU and more memory, built in HDD or SSD... voila, next XBox. I think this is honestly MS' plan, and I don't think Sony wants to go to Nintendo-land as badly as MS does.  They will bide their time, and make a true successor to the PS3, and the PS3 will stay on the shelves for the long run, despite a moderately more powerful, all-digital XBox720, and probably not-as-powerful Wii HD.  From this point forward, the whole idea of console "generations" is out the door, IMO.  That will be the long term effects of the Wii, with regards to hardware anyhow.

Apple is really the company to watch the closest.  They definately have the highest "disruption potential" at this point.  A new Apple digital-only console could rock the console world sometime in the near future.

Won't happen.

I agree i think MS won't be first to rush again.

Isn't the CELL processor strong enough to last to the next gen with a little improvement? Maybe with the PS4 we'll just see a just barely better version of the CELL but with a superb GPU and a lot of RAM. Also higher numbers for cache, bus and those other specs I don't know anything about...