Bad News, Good News, Crap News

So, QuakeCon has kicked off, and three sizable chunks of info have already bounced away regarding id. The bad news? There won't be any showing of Doom 4 this year. It's just not ready yet, sadly. The good news? Rage and id Tech 5 are coming to iPhone, with a small "showoff" release this year and something more substantial when the PC game is released. And the crap news? id Tech 5 won't be licensed outside of Bethesda's stable of studios - apparently id are willing to put their hat up and let Epic take over the whole engine middleware thing.

Rage on the iPhone? that's a really bad decision, IMO. Just promotes more games on a device that shouldn't even be used for gaming.

No shocker there, I don't see Carmack sticking with the company much longer anyway. I assume he's already groomed a few in-house programmers on taking over for him. I don't really see this as hurting id, per se, because really, they could make a Hovertank 5000 based on their old DOS game and it'd sell at least 1,000,000 copies legally at say $50-60 a pop.

BlazingPhoenix said:

Rage on the iPhone? that's a really bad decision, IMO. Just promotes more games on a device that shouldn't even be used for gaming.

Why shouldn't it be? Because Nintendo didn't make it? It's a pretty decently-powered machine in the palm of your hand, it has a unique interface that allows a pretty good gaming experience, I don't see why this is a problem at all. This sounds like a case of "STOP HAVING FUN, GUYS!" (note : I don't have an iPhone or a Mac :-P)

Naked Snake said:

No shocker there, I don't see Carmack sticking with the company much longer anyway.

Personally I hope Doomguy in Person doesn't leave, Kevin Cloud. Especially if it's before Doom 4.

well... shit.

And there goes any interest I had in quakecon this year =/

Naked Snake said:

Why shouldn't it be? Because Nintendo didn't make it? It's a pretty decently-powered machine in the palm of your hand, it has a unique interface that allows a pretty good gaming experience, I don't see why this is a problem at all. This sounds like a case of "STOP HAVING FUN, GUYS!" (note : I don't have an iPhone or a Mac :-P)

The problem is that since the play area and the controls share the same space, anything that uses more than roughly 2 buttons and a D-Pad is going to have issues.

I'm disappointed that they wont show Doom 4 this year but I guess I could wait another year. Also Rage on the iphone looks very impressive even through its a mere tech demo.

It's bad enough when they dumb PC games down enough to make them fit the console market, but if they are going to develop new games with the iPhone in mind, meh. Just meh.

Gez said:

It's bad enough when they dumb PC games down enough to make them fit the console market, but if they are going to develop new games with the iPhone in mind, meh. Just meh.

Look on the bright side, it might actually do Doom 4 a few favours. Then again ...

id Tech 5 wasn't ported to nor running on the iPhone: http://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/21068255886

Does this mean id Tech 5 won't be going GPL in the future? Does ZeniMax technically own the engine now, or does id?

Terrible news regarding id Tech 5, but not too unexpected - it is Zenimax, after all. We probably won't see id Tech 5 or anything id ever going GPL as long as id Software is a Zenimax subsidiary.

id Tech 4 was licensed to all of one other commercial game, whereas there were dozens of id Tech 3 games. This is just putting into stone what's happened with the engines' popularity anyway. FWIW, I think it'll still go GPL once they have id Tech 6 out... Carmack was talking at QuakeCon how he managed to convince Bethesda to carry out with putting Doom 3 under the GPL basically because it doesn't hurt the company.

chungy said:
Carmack was talking at QuakeCon how he managed to convince Bethesda to carry out with putting Doom 3 under the GPL basically because it doesn't hurt the company.

Yeah, but it was fully coded before the company was bought over. Maybe Bethesda will be more zealous over oncoming and future games, and perhaps Carmack will feel less attached.

When Hollenshead said "The guys are working hard on it but we're not quite at the point where we're ready to give a demonstration on it at this point" I was fucking pissed off, waiting whole year just to hear this. I would have been glad even with a single consept art image with somekind of music, please just something else than emptiness of space. I have spoken, ugh.

id Software, I am disappoint.

Waffenak said:

When Hollenshead said "The guys are working hard on it but we're not quite at the point where we're ready to give a demonstration on it at this point" I was fucking pissed off, waiting whole year just to hear this. I would have been glad even with a single consept art image with somekind of music, please just something else than emptiness of space. I have spoken, ugh.

They've learned their lesson with Doom 3. They released large amounts of art, caps, and concepts which weren't practical for the time frame and technology. I think they'll keep this hush hush. They barely made any hype for Rage.

RAGE? Meh!
iPhone? Meh!
"Doom"4? Meh!
id Software? Meh!

None of these things were unexpected and some were utterly predictable. The gaming industry today - Meh!

They really should get out of your lawn anyway. :p