An interesting article over on Next-Gen.biz quotes Valve boss Gabe Newell expressing concerns over next-gen games development. According to Newell, developers should be 'terrified' of the giant hurdles involved in next generation console development.Technologically, I think every game developer should be terrified of the next generation of processors. Your existing code, you can just throw it away. It's not going to be helpful in creating next generation game titles.
Most of the problems of getting these systems running on these multicore processors are not solved. They are doctoral theses, not known implementation problems. So it's not even clear that over the lifespan of these next generation systems that they will be solved problems. The amount of time it takes to get a good multicore engine running, the Xbox 360 might not even be on the market any longer. That should scare the crap out of everybody.
Really good engineers are going to be much more valuable and engineers who used to be valuable writing game code in the previous generation may end up becoming thorns in the side of key programmers who can write multi-core game code.
"Your Existing Code? Throw it Away"
