John Carmack, the lead programmer of id Software and the man behind popular Doom and Quake titles, said he would not like to jump to DirectX 10 hardware, but would rather concentrate on his primary development platform – the Xbox 360 game console.

“Personally, I wouldn’t jump at something like DX10 right now. I would let things settle out a little bit and wait until there’s a really strong need for it,” Mr. Carmack said in an interview with Game Informer Magazine.

This is not the first time when Mr. Carmack takes Microsoft Xbox 360 side, as it is easier to develop new games for the consoles. Mr. Carmack said that graphics cards drivers have been a big headache for him and it became more complicated to determine real performance of application because of multiply “layers of abstraction on the PC”. The lead programmer of id Software called Xbox 360’s more direct approach “refreshing” and even praised Microsoft’s development environment “as easily the best of any of the consoles, thanks to the company's background as a software provider”.

“I especially like the work I’m doing on the [Xbox] 360, and it’s probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I’ve worked with,” he said.

While from commercial perspective reluctance to develop for the latest DirectX 10 hardware – which is currently not available widely – may be considered as logical, from the technology standpoint stagnation may transform into creation of game titles that are outdated on arrival. The vast majority of graphics cards installed inside gamers’ personal computers are compatible with DirectX 9, and Xbox 360’s application programming interface has similar feature-set.

But while it may be dangerous to rely next-generation titles on current generation hardware, visually advanced games may not necessarily become the most popular too. For instance, Far Cry game was objectively more visually attractive than Doom III or Half-Life 2, but the latter two were far more popular.