Speaking to Industry Gamers, id Software's John Carmack expressed his opinion that mobile devices will soon become more powerful than the current generation of consoles and that they might replace them sooner or later.
"It's amazing to think that when we started Rage, iOS didn't exist. There was no iPhone," Carmack pondered. "All of that has happened just in the space of one project development timeline. And that's a little scary when you think about it, because major landscape change could be happening underneath our feet as we work on these large scale projects. And we're going to be doing everything we can to constrain our projects more to not take so long."
Carmack then admitted that he has noticed that more and more of his friends and colleagues are spending less time with their consoles and more time with their iPad games. However, he noted that iPad games are "a different experience... a diversion rather than a destination."
But the increased mobile devices power is still worrisome to AAA developers such as id Software. "Could the bottom drop out on the triple A market because everyone's playing Angry Birds? It doesn't seem to be happening. The numbers don't show that. We're selling more big titles than ever before, despite having all of these other platforms out there. So it looks like it's parallel growth rather than one stealing from the other."
"But platform wise, you could certainly imagine a future where, instead of having your console, you have your mobile device and it talks to your TV and when you want the experience on your big screen with the surround sound coming out of there, it's still on the same device."
To prove his point, Carmack noted that the iPad 2 is nearly half as powerful as the Xbox 360 right now, which means that its 1st or 2nd successor would surpass it within 2 years.