Epic President: 'What's The Point of Next-Gen Consoles?'Update: We've since posted a clarification for this story that Epic doesn't believe mobile is supplanting the very next generation of consoles.
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Nintendo's Wii U will launch sometime next year, and rumors continue to circulate that a new Xbox or PlayStation could follow one or two years after Wii U. The Wii U is reportedly a bit more powerful than either the Xbox 360 or PS3, but when a PS4 or Xbox 720 hits the market, those machines will no doubt be even more powerful. In a sense though, none of this even matters anymore. Mobile could effectively replace consoles by then, if you ask Epic Games President Mike Capps.
"Your iPhone 8 will probably wirelessly connect to your television set to give you that big screen gaming experience... So really, what's the point of those next-gen consoles?"
"As a middleware provider and as a game developer it sure would be nice if all the different platforms were really similar for us – it would make it easier to work between them with maybe just a few differentiating features we could take advantage of. I'd hate to say that the Wii U is late; in fact, you could almost argue that it's early," Capps began. "They're aiming for a point beyond the current generation – they're just not leapfrogging it. One can certainly envision a future a couple years down the road where we have some significantly leapfrogged generation and then the Wii U again becomes a system that's not easily portable between the other platforms. But honestly, I think the bigger challenge for us is mobile."
Capps believes that the rate of technological progress in smartphones and tablets is completely changing the industry. By the time the next generation of consoles gets into full gear, we'll have smartphones that are probably even more powerful than today's Xbox 360.
"Before the problem was between the consoles and PC where they had very different levels. The power of your PC could be 100 times the power of somebody else's PC. This time the problem could be mobile. If you look at the ridiculous acceleration of iPhone hardware and technology, trying to find a sweet spot for tech to make your mobile game... I mean, what would your mobile game look like in 2015? Who knows how fast that's going to operate, but you can bet it's going to be faster than an Xbox 360," he said.
"So I think that's the real challenge for us now, rather than worrying about the difference between a couple consoles and some order of magnitude, whether 3X or 4X. It's about how do we deal with iPhone 8... if you watch where the gamers are going that's where they are. Your iPhone 8 will probably plug into your TV, or better yet, wirelessly connect to your television set to give you that big screen gaming experience with good sound. So really, what's the point of those next-gen consoles? It's a very interesting situation to be looking at. That's what we're starting to think about more... not how do we scale from some Nintendo platform to some other future console," he concluded.
Capps has been talking up mobile's impact on the industry for some time now, previously discussing his fears that 99-cent apps are killing traditional gaming and that triple-A titles like Gears of War could be harmed by the App Store.
Update: It's worth noting that connecting up an iPad for use as a gaming controller on a big screen TV (a la the Wii U tablet) is already possible with Apple TV and AirPlay. Lag can be a problem, but the kinks will no doubt continue to be ironed out with future hardware.
