Carmack: Mobile to pass consoles in a "very short time"

Sure, your humble mobile communication device is loaded up with 27 different versions of Angry Birds right now, but time makes fools of us all. Just, you know, fools with really awesome cell phones.

"It’s unquestionable that within a very short time, we’re going to have portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles," id Software machine whisperer John Carmack told IndustryGamers.

"People have exaggerated the relative powers - the iPad2 is not more powerful than the 360. It’s still a factor of a couple weaker. But the fact that it’s gotten that close that fast - that means that almost certainly, 2 years from now, there will be mobile devices more powerful than what we’re doing all these fabulous games on right now."

He also commented on the perfume-soaked allure of convenience, noting that mobile games and cloud gaming both use that bait to reel in many a customer. "A whole lot of convenience can make up for [what's lacking]," he said, referring to cloud gaming's latency and graphical shortcomings.

So then, the future is now. Now-ish. Angry Birds with HDR lighting, disturbingly accurate pig destruction physics, and DirectX 26 support, here we come.