Doing one of my regular turns around gaming news sites, I came across an interview with John Romero, of Doom and, dare I say it, Daikatana fame, now Founder/President of Slipgate Ironworks. You can find it over at Adrenaline Vault. Slipgate is supposedly working on a new MMO for the PC.

What I found interesting is this particular exchange:

3. Where is it all going? What do you see happening in the next five years and beyond?

JR: Right now MMOs, mobile and PC episodic are really polarizing into the newest most important segments in gaming. Next-gen console is big but its future isn’t too bright with the emergence of cheap PC multi-core processors and the big change the PC industry will go through during the next 5 years to accommodate the new multi-core-centric hardware designs. My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and XBOX 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether. The Wii has the perfect design for a console that doesn’t pretend to be a PC and is geared more toward casual gamers than hardcore gamers. The hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the whole house over wifi, even the video signal.

This answer struck me as wrong in almost every important respect possible. Where it isn't wrong, it's self-contradictory. Let's take a closer look.

Right now MMOs, mobile and PC episodic are really polarizing into the newest most important segments in gaming.

I'm not even sure any sense can be wrung out of this sentence. The majority of games still aren't MMOs. It's a relatively new business model for gaming-- subscriptions as opposed to single unit sales. I'm not sure why the distinction "PC Episodic" is made except to underscore what he says later about PCs and consoles. Given that two of the three next-generation consoles currently shipping include network connections and hard drives either standard or as an option, I don't see how these consoles are any less a potential target for episodic content than a PC. In fact, since consoles offer a stable development target over its life, in theory it should allow episodic content to be delivered more quickly, as the QA process can be streamlined. If you've shipped a game engine for a console and that console is on the market for 5 years, you can develop new content for that engine from year one through year 5 and know it will work, and you only need to test it against the platform you developed it for; no need to try and cram new and better graphics into each successive episode and then still have to worry about lower-spec'd machines, the way PC games do.

Next-gen console is big but its future isn’t too bright with the emergence of cheap PC multi-core processors and the big change the PC industry will go through during the next 5 years to accommodate the new multi-core-centric hardware designs.

Here, Romero manages to be both wrong and to contradict himself, which is no mean feat. He acknowledges that next-gen consoles are big, but say they don't have a bright future because of what will happen in the next 5 years. That's about what the usual lifespan of a console is. So I'm not sure if they're big or not in his eyes, it's a bit unclear.

What is also unclear is how multi-core-centric hardware designs and cheap multi-core processors somehow favor PCs over consoles. I own a laptop with one CPU with two cores, and a console with three cores. I've lost track of how many cores the PS3 has, I'm not even sure anyone even agrees on it anymore. It's somewhere between 8 and 10, though. Gaming is also arguably the most difficult of applications to effectively utilize multiple cores and multiple processors for. Game developers, by and large, have been skeptical about whether or not optimizing for multiple processors is worth it, even while the console manufacturers push it.

I don't see how anything that can be done to give a PC an advantage in the area of multi core architectures can't be applied to a console. This is especially true of the Xbox 360, which is a multi-core console with a hard drive and a network connection, just like a PC, and is promoted by Microsoft as an attractive target for PC game developers (as well as the reverse).

My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and XBOX 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether. The Wii has the perfect design for a console that doesn’t pretend to be a PC and is geared more toward casual gamers than hardcore gamers.

The entire industry seems to have its collective head up its ass right now regarding the words "hardcore" and "casual". Everybody uses them, but no two agree on what the heck they mean. While I realize it's very hip to give Nintendo well-earned kudos on the Wii's innovative design and quick sales success so far, to declare its design tradeoffs a win in this generation is, I think, pretty darn premature. Each successive Nintendo console since Sony entered the market has sold fewer units than the one before. The Wii has not yet surpassed that figure. When the Wii has sold as many units as the GameCube or the N64, I'll be willing to say they've reversed the trend. Until then, I'd say their spectacular sales to date have been fueled by pent-up demand for their first-party titles (Zelda) and interest in their innovative controller (Wiimote). It's also due to the fact that since they did not feel the need to be absolutely bleeding edge with their hardware, the Wii is a device they can comfortably manufacture in sufficient amounts, and sell without taking a loss. That's a great strategy that has stood Nintendo in good stead over the years, and I think will continue to do so.

However, I think it's a colossal mistake to label Wii owners "casual" and Xbox 360 and PlayStation owners as "hardcore". This seems to be based more on popular conceptions about the kinds of games these consoles are known for: their first party titles. Microsoft has the sci-fi shooter corner staked out with Halo and Gears of War, and people feel comfortable calling that "hardcore". Sony, with their JRPGs and GTAs, can also be called "hardcore". For some reason Nintendo, with Link and Mario, are called "casual". I don't know about you, but I see just as many, if not more, fans dressing themselves up as Link and Princess Peach than I do the Master Chief and Cloud. Nintendo fans are just as hardcore, if not more hardcore, than anyone else. They're fiercely loyal, and Nintendo's low pricing and consistent franchises make it easy for them to be so. Everyone who bought a GameCube and liked it is going to buy a Wii, and then some. Until they've all got their consoles, nobody really has any idea whether the Wii is appealing to "hardcore" or "casual" gamers.

The hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the whole house over wifi, even the video signal.

Romero's become full-blown psychotic here. He's just taken Microsoft and Sony to task for making consoles that "pretend to be PCs". He's lauded Nintendo for resisting those trends, by making a console less like a PC than either the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation. He's intimated that consoles need to undergo a "massive rethink". When he comes to describing that rethink, it looks exactly like what Microsoft and Sony are doing: making consoles a "PC-like platform that sits in the living room and serves the whole house over WiFi, even the video signal."

John, exactly what is an Xbox 360 with a wireless adapter, connected to a PC running Windows XP or Media Center? Isn't that a PC-like platform that sits in the living room and serves a house, including the video signal?

Romero wants to put the cart before the horse, reducing the console to the role of a peripheral in a living room where the PC is the dominant part. That's what we've got already. That's what's getting a major rethink or going away. The center of the living room is the last step in the chain, not the first-- the object that's plugged into your stereo receiver and your video hardware. The console. The console isn't going to give its features over to some other PC-like platform with PC-like problems; it's going to absorb the PC features that are needed (like networking and storage) to leave the PC whatever is left: management tasks. The PC is the platform on which you retrieve and manage your content; but the console is the platform you're actually going to use to interact with your content, since it's the point closest to how that interaction takes place: the video and audio hardware, and the interface that is most comfortable to use while seated in that viewing environment, which is some sort of remote or controller, and not a mouse or keyboard.

Romero also says it's the hardcore gamers who will be doing this. The hardcore gamers, presumably, buying the PlayStations (#1 console last generation) and the Xbox 360 (#1 console this generation, so far) and the Xbox 1 (#2 console last generation).

Sounds to me like wishful thinking. I'm not saying that PC gaming is going away; but just because I'm not doesn't mean that console gaming is going away. I think Romero would like to carve off a niche for himself and claim that it's the sole province of the PC platform (hardcore games and MMOs) that is unthreatened by consoles, but that's just not true. The closer consoles come to being affordable devices with PC capabilities, the less true it becomes.