Id's next much-debated-but-never-disclosed project will certainly be feeling the 360 love though, as Carmack confirmed that it was being developed at the same time for both platforms: "Our internal project is not currently announced ...[but] we're doing simultaneous development on Xbox 360 and PC." However, there was good news for PC fans reeling from the shock of seeing one of their favourite developers switching its focus from PC to the supposed console dark side. Carmack admitted that despite 360's impeccable tech credentials, it still wasn't a match for the big beige box. "They can quote these incredibly high numbers of giga-glops or tera-flops or whatever, but in reality they're significantly slower than a modern high-end PC."

Unsurprisingly for a man who built his reputation as one of the world's leading engine builders, it was the Xbox 360's graphical capabilities which had Carmack most excited: "The graphics systems are much better. The capabilities of the Xbox 360 are really good on the graphics side - although, not head or shoulders above any PC stuff you can buy at a higher price point."

TeamXbox: Is it possible to measure the Xenos performance against a PC part? Or does the fact that they have different shader architectures, run with different operating systems, and system hardware, make a comparison too difficult?

Bob Feldstein: It really is difficult to measure the environments against each other. You would tend to write an app to run well in its intended environment. I would discourage trying to compare them in these manners. That being said, the console has certain advantages - most notably, the controlled environment. This is what allows us to overcome memory bandwidth bottlenecks with Intelligent Memory and make the 48 shader units operate at peak efficiency. A device could have an infinite number of shader ALUs, but without the memory bandwidth to feed the system all of the hardware would go for naught.