Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: iphone, id, doom, quake, carmack | Themes: Smartphones
Among the hardcore gaming crowd, John Carmack’s work with id Software is legendary for producing 3D gaming works such as Doom and Quake. Although Carmack is clearly comfortable pushing the limits of PC hardware, his latest interest appears to be in mobile games – and his sights are now set on the Apple iPhone.
"We wanted to do something for the iPhone, but we just didn’t have the scheduling or the resources available," Carmack said to Forbes. "I really regret not having something at launch."
The launch that Carmack referred to was the launch of the App Store on iTunes, which coincided with the release of the iPhone 3G. The App Store allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to download and install applications and games for use on their mobile device.
While Carmack won’t have the usual dual-core CPU and blazing AMD or NVIDIA GPUs on tap, he seems more than confident that the iPhone is capable of delivering the graphical goods.
"The iPhone, as a device, is in the same generation power-wise as the PS2 or Xbox," he said. "The graphics are a little lower but the RAM is a lot higher. … You could easily spend $10 million on an iPhone game, but the market just can’t support that yet."
Anna Kang, president of id Mobile, explained that the game for iPhone would be based off an existing id property, meaning that it could be from id’s roster of first-person shooters, the old classic Commander Keen, or even the lesser known Orcs & Elves game from the Nintendo DS.
Carmack isn’t letting on that type of game it’ll be, but he intends to impress. "We have a title we want to develop exclusively for iPhone," he added. "I’m not announcing anything specifically, but it would be a graphical tour de force."
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Lol, no wonder ID is making crap games now.
I just cannot see very many people buying games for the iPhone, I could be wrong though.
Also wonder if Apple payed him to make it or if he just thinks the sales will be there ?
iPhone being the same power as PS2 and Xbox is such a LOAD. If anyone remembers, this is quite the bit of double-talk, considering just about a month ago they were saying it was "almost as powerful as a Dreamcast", which is obviously quite a bit less powerful than a PS2/Xbox. The iPhone might have a better CPU and more RAM than the average portable, but its graphics accelerator is very weak even compared to the Dreamcast, let alone the PS2 or Xbox. It's really not much more potent than a DS, and given that it doesn't even have a D-pad or any other game-friendly buttons, it is not a viable contender in the handheld game market.....at least not compared to the real game handhelds, DS and PSP. It's great for a phone, but that's about it folks.
Whatever...
When was the last time that id has done something really worth noting or caring about? Carmack hasn't done anything important since Quake 3, and in game industry years that is a millennium.
This isn't important or newsworthy.
Just because you are clueless about what ID or Carmack has done in the last few years does not mean they've done nothing. In addition to updating their main franchises (which I'd grant you is not groundbreaking) it was my understanding that they had a pretty good renderer for games on the mobile java platform. That and I find Carmack's aerospace ventures to be interesting; but that may just be me.
ID still makes games ... *shrugs* I tend to view ID and Unreal in the same light, great good looking game engines that everyone else uses to make their games. ID lost me when Doom 3 was not Co-op out of the box. I thought it was cool they did try something different, to make the game scary but I was truly craving to recall the time when myself and three other buddies slaughtered the hordes together in co-op delight back in the DOOM/DOOM II days.
Commander Keen! Commander Keen! That would be awesome. Come to think of it, though, my Motorola SLVR could probably play that game with a simple hack...