Canon 1DX - The Megapixel race is over?

Canon have announced the new Canon 1D X DSLR camera to replace both the Canon 1D Mark4 and Canon 1Ds Mark 3. Interestingly the new Canon 1D X has 18 Mp replacing the Canon 1D4 that had 21Mp.

We will be having a hands on look at the Canon 1DX this week and will post a review of the findings plus hopefully a few photos after the event.

Despite the numbers the actual difference in pixel count between 18Mp and 21Mp is minimal so it could be a good sign that finally image quality and noise performance are more important than the headline grabbing mega pixels. Does this mean that the megapixel race is finally over and features other than the sensor pixel count are starting to be more important. Certainly from a photographic point of view an ISO range up to 200,000 is of more use than a few extra pixels especially for low light wedding shots and the massive files generated by big pixel counts are a negative for long term storage.

Does this mean that the Canon 5D Mark 3 will feature less pixels than the Canon 5DII? As the 1Ds3 featured the same sensor as the Canon 5D2 we could speculate that this new 18Mp sensor will find its way into the Canon 5DIII when it is released.