Topic: quakecon

[ChaNoKin]

Quakecon has come and gone, Mr. Carmack gave a very interesting speech and when he spoke about consoles he didn't even mention the Revolution. That made me sad, I mean he is one of the most influential people in gamedev and he has nothing to say about Nintendo's next-gen? If I was in charge of it I would have sent Id many devkits so they can work on something. Hopefully things will come around as Id has worked on many Nintendo systems.

Another thing he stated is that developing for the X360 is a lot easier than PS3, and many other developers are crying because they both use multiple processors which make coding efficiently lot harder than it is for a single one. It is known that GCN was easier to develop for than PS2, lets pray that Revolution will be even easier than X360.

[Djunknown]

This might be better suited for the Other Systems board.

On topic, I think this quote best describes why id and Nintendo aren't that close:
(Courtesy of Billy boy @ Gameinformer.com)

Quote
While he admitted that he seemed to be a bigger fan of Microsoft, he did say he was interested in Sony making waves in the sense that they may make PlayStation 3 more of an open platform, since he didn’t like closed development platforms and certification processes. “Nintendo was always the worst about that sort of thing, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re not real close.”

Sounds like there's too much red tape for Carmack and Co. The burden's on Nintendo to court id to make some titles for the revolution, but unless they get over to Texas, I don't see them making any titles for the big N.

One can safely say that the 'Cube is a developer's dream, but a publisher's nightmare. But that story has been well documented. That's the kicker: the publisher's hold the key. if they see the Rev as another 'Cube, expect more PS3 and '360 ports with no Rev version in sight.

[BlackNMild2k1]

here is a link to the full interview transcribed

John Carmack speech transcribed courtesy of aaaaa00 @ B3D forums

there is also a link to the video it was transcribed from in the link posted above.  

[mantidor]

But he praised Nintendo's aproach to innovation rather than graphics? or was it Romero who said that ? now I cant remember...

[nemo_83]

I think it was Romero.

Carmack came off as a hyprocrit in a way.  He's whining about development difficulty, but where was he to make a damn game for Cube which was the easiest system to develop for this gen?

A lot of publishers try hide their biases behind money.  But the numbers don't add up.  I too want Nintendo to become aggressive about getting games rather than being protective, but publishers need to stop making excuses.  The REV is the only system right now with talk of ease of development, low costs, and innovation.

[ChaNoKin]

Sorry about the topic being here, didn't really know where to put it, but since it was Revolution related I chose to put it here.

I think Carmack was making the doom3 engine during this generation, and porting it to xbox was probably too easy to let the bussiness opportunity go.

I have to agree that he sounds hypocritic when he states that next-gen are going to be too much work, but then again almost everyone I know complains about the job. I think to him the fun part is when the interesting development is going on (base engine, rendering, networking, physics) and when it comes time to port things to a new system it must be quite boring, I mean the thinking part is almost over and lets face it there is not much fun in doing the same thing over and over.

As for Id's relation with Nintendo it has gone from small to nothing, maybe no good reps from both sides.

[Ian Sane]

"publishers need to stop making excuses. The REV is the only system right now with talk of ease of development, low costs, and innovation."

Publishers don't care about stuff like that.  They justifiably assume that an exclusive PS3 game will kill any exclusive Rev game in sales.  Money is all that matters.  Nintendo can be as developer friendly as they want.  That will help their own teams out and any second party deals they make but publishers make the call for third party games and they don't care about developer friendliness.  They care about market share and the potential sales a greater market share provides.  Nintendo has to sell systems to attract more publishers.  Of course the annoying "can't sell systems without third parties, can't get third parties with market share" scenario occurs.  To counter that they have to give publishers another incentive that will suffice until console sales increase.  No matter what though being developer friendly, while a nice gesture, doesn't help anything.  Nintendo has to be publisher friendly.

[KDR_11k]

iD is run by a bunch of geeks, they've opensourced all of their older engines (with Q3A announced to be opensourced soon), were among the first to officially support mods, support less popular platforms (Linux, Mac), use OpenGL, disable the copy protection of their games in later patches and apparently hate it when anyone tries to keep them on a leash. Noone tells iD software "you release now, we'lll patch it later". The only other company with similar ethics these days is Epic AFAIK, both Epic and iD originate from the early days of the x86 platform. Apogee/3D Realms has been a bit quiet lately but Prey is looking nice, too. Return of teh old skool!

How is Carmack a hypocrite? If he priorizes iD's rights over ease of development that's an ideological decision. Just like you wouldn't buy "Al Qaeda pies" even if they were the best pies around and wouldn't be a hypocrite for complaining that the pies you can buy suck. If Nintendo is taking a more open approach next gen iD won't object to working with them but since Nintendo is a bunch of control freaks that's as likely as pigs flying without using a catapult.

Or, how about an example you fanboys can understand? If Microsoft had a bunch of great, innovative games next gen, would you break with your blind Nintendo loyality to support innovation or would you complain that the games aren't coming out on the Nintendo system?

[vudu]

iD hasn't made a great game in a long time.   Carmack's engines are awesome, but the games have been lacking in recent years.

KDR - If you didn't enjoy the scripting in HL2, I imagine you must have hated it in Doom 3.

[Galford]

Carmack is an odd duck.

He's one who will cut through BS when it comes to technology and says what he means, when
he feels like it.  Carmack is also open to new technologies. He'll give just about anything a try
if it means improving on screen graphics.

Flip side to Carmack/id...
What exactly has id done since Quake except make a prettier version of Quake?

[KDR_11k]

vudu: Naah, Doom 3 didn't leave me standing around useless and searching for a spot where I can actually understand what's being said while the actors act out their scenes.  

[MrMojoRising]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Or, how about an example you fanboys can understand? If Microsoft had a bunch of great, innovative games next gen, would you break with your blind Nintendo loyality to support innovation or would you complain that the games aren't coming out on the Nintendo system?

Thanks for not sounding like a dick...