During his expansive, three-hour long QuakeCon 2013 keynote speech/dissertation on the future a basically everything in the entire world, id Software co-founder John Carmack shared his expectations for the lifespan a the newest console generation, as well as the nebulous state a our understanding a consoles in general.

"I don't think there's going t' be much a a push for another generation for a long time," Carmack said in response t' a question from the audience. "Really, we could be doing great, innovative work even on the current generation for many more years yet. it be not like anybody's seen everything that ye could do."

"I'll be surprised if we see radically better games enabled because a the new capabilities on the consoles," he continued. "'n, I've thought for a while we be now past the knee a the curve a the payoff benefit, so we be going t' be definitely on the gradual sloping part a it going forward."

Carmack added that he doesn't expect a next-next generation a consoles will be necessary until the trade-off can be made for hardware that can handle ray tracing. best that take the form a a PlayStation 5 or Xbox 12 as we'd be accustomed t', however, be unknown in his eyes:

"Whether we pillage something like cloud gaming owning large shares a the market before then," he said, "or people using both systems or ye just play on yer mobile phone 'n it shows up on whatever screen's near ye, that could become [the] dominant gaming platform. But, a traditional next Xbox? Yeah, I think that be a long ways off, 'n there's a credible argument t' be made that there may not be another console generation as we know it now."