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John Carmack on the X-box Advisory Board?
Prabhjeet Singh writes "Voodoo Extreme reports that John Carmack is on the X-Box advisory board. Here is the scoop. "According to PlanetXbox, id Software's John Carmack is now on the technical advisory board for Microsoft's X-Box console system". Check it out." The original source is on PlanetXBox. I tried reaching id for comment, but was unable to get through - this is still unsubstantiated.
no.
That's how they'll get their foot in the door. Gaming.
But with multiple functionality, Microsoft could easily eat a small proportion of the desktop market. The folks for whom computers are just too expensive, or complicated - they need SOME computer functionality (primarily gaming, yes, the web, ecommerce, email, obviously, financial planning services, word processing, multimedia/streaming video/audio), but they don't need the functionality, complexity, and expense of a CAD workstation, or C++ development workstation. Those people, who may currently have a PC, and know it's too much for their needs, and those people who just want a gaming console and find XBox more compelling with the extra features than dreamcast or ps/2, they're going to buy XBox.
This casual home market is a big market, and the game-console/DVD player/webTV browser is one hell of a gateway. Give them some limited PC functionality, and this thing will be on fire. Then give the developers a compelling development market like DirectX which gives them a very easy way to port between this huge console market, and desktop PCs, and the developers will forget OpenGL, ps/2, Macintosh, or anything else ever existed.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hahaha. Its funny seeing a linux freak get pissed when Microsoft gets something good.
I doubt too many of those Japanese developers can code rings around him. Square? haha dont even make me laugh. perhaps they could make cgi better than him.
Namco? No... perhaps they could make a better game than him alone, but I doubt anyone working there knows more than him.
Capcom? No... they may make a better 2D fighting game, but I would like to see them try and make a FPS like Quake.
Konami? Maybe. But not one person there im sure knows more than him.
Remember, when you see an average game and you see an id game, look at the credits. An average games credits are minutes long watching. id's fits on ONE SCREEN.
I'm almost positive he's on advisory boards for both nVidia and 3dfx, and maybe even Apple.
Well, there's no advisory board as such for Apple, but it was Carmack's personal evangelism that convinced Jobs to dump QuickDraw3D and go with OpenGL, to name his most obvious influence. You can rest assured that what he has to say is at least considered seriously by Steve J., which is Apple for all practical purposes.
There's no reason why Xbox won't support OpenGL. Even if it didn't come with opengl support right out of the box, it'd only be a matter of time before someone wrote the necessary drivers.
:-)
Microsoft could easily block OpenGL drivers though legal means. Just make a licence for the box that forbids development/deployment of any driver not approved by Microsoft. IMHO that's exactly the kind of stunt they intend to pull.
If Microsoft does manage to get a decent share of the settop box market you can expect all the usual evil business methods we have come to know and detest.
I fear that everybody - consumers, developers, competitors, distributors - are going to be taken for the usual ride if Microsoft's Xbox plans unfold as they intend.
The best form of protection the world could possibly get from dirty tricks connected with XBox is legal: if Microsoft wants to take a PC and call it an XBox, then the XBox will automatically become part of Microsoft's monopoly, and Microsoft will be prohibited in a rather direct way from playing games with its licence. That means the XBox will be a PC. That means we can put Linux on it. If we can put Linux on it, I really don't case what else Microsoft does with it.
On the other hand, if the XBox turns out not to be a PC, then I don't really care what they do with it: it won't be able to run PC games and, not having that single crucial advantage, it will be a lame duck in the market.
There are, of course, other responses to XBox than the purely legal. For example, if you are a game developer get a life and don't develop for it. That means don't develop for DirectX. If you are a decent developer you can make twice as much money doing network apps, or you can join the good guy game companies, for example, Loki. If you are not a decent developer, then by all means, continue developing developing for DirectX
This post will surely bring out the usual astroturfing Microsoft moderaters, so if you are one of those, take note: Don't bother. I already marked it down.
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The X Box does not yet exist.
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"... and in awe of Carmack probably somewhere between Doom and Quake. He writes some amazingly fast graphics stuff."
I always liked his work because of the stability. In Doom, if you go walking through and around things, the engine doesn't crash. You can even have monsters spill into the great void outside of the defined map, and spend hours running around nothing with only the HoM effect to keep you company..
Compare this with Duke3D which would crash so hard when you left the map (or sometimes, though holes in the map around doors), that after the first two versions, 3DRealms made it so that you dieded if you crossed a map boundtry (to stop the game from getting to where it could crash).
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Why? Microsoft gets feedback from an industry expert. John gets early access to information about hardware. It is beneficial to both parties.
Is that selling out? No way. From what I can tell, John is perfectly happy to speak his mind regardless of what the hardware manufacturer wants to hear. He still does care about Linux. He joined our (PI) technical meeting a few months ago. You're just seeing less of him recently because he's busy with his next product.
- |Daryll
You seem to be forgetting that NVIDIA will be making OpenGL drivers available for the X-Box (mentioned in the article on the X-Box in DDJ).
Download a fast DirectX Tetris Clone [276 k]
There's no reason why Xbox won't support OpenGL. Even if it didn't come with opengl support right out of the box, it'd only be a matter of time before someone wrote the necessary drivers.
If John Carmack is on the advisory board, maybe Microsoft can build something good the first time around. Perhaps they've noticed they make shit the first time so they are buying companies and renting people to build it for them...
I think the key word is Unsubstantiated. This is hardly news. Rumors shouldn't get on /. Esp. the MOSR or the IDsoftware types.
Oh well.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
...for making an effort to validate the story, and stating very clearly that it's currently unsubstantiated. That's such an improvement over the standard quality of research around here. Congrats and thanks.
(Of course, it's kind of sad when standard journalistic due diligence is such the exception that it sticks out like this....)
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They have a smaller version of the optical mouse which is dual-handed (it's normal mouse-sized, rather than the oversized Intellimouse Explorer) I like the bigger version, but then again, I'm right handed, so it's not an issue. The smaller one feels nice too though.
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...then that's excellent.
.plan about it.
;)
I've been impressed by Id before I knew who they were (Wolfenstein), and in awe of Carmack probably somewhere between Doom and Quake. He writes some amazingly fast graphics stuff.
Also, even if the console is from Microsoft, I still trust Carmack's integrity. If anyone has a chance of getting something good for both the gaming community and the free software community, even from Microsoft, it's Carmack. And if he doesn't like the way things are going, I bet he'd resign, and post a nice, long, juicy
Anyone have any more general X-Box details? From what I've heard, it should be pretty cheap, and probably pretty hackable too, just because of the PC hardware. But then, the specs will be in flux for a while, and I'm sure they'll do their best to secure it. But that will surely go the way of Playstations and DVD Players: physical access to a self-enclosed hardware device is always enough for a determined hacker.
And if they tried a DivX sort of system, which is what it sounds like where Microsoft wants to go tomorrow, well... I for one would run like the plague. And go back to playing Metroid, and not paying by the minute.
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Well, this is very interesting indeed.
Carmack was interested in the Linux market for their games at one point, pointing out that many industry people were going to watch the sales of Quake III for Linux very closely to see if it was a viable gaming market.
I don't know how those sales figures turned out, but if id is now going to producing games for the x-box, where does Linux fall in all of this? Given: The number one software market is games. It will be more difficult to promote Linux as a viable replacement for the desktop operating system if the xbox is taking a piece of the market share.
I am very unsure what Carmack's interest in the xbox is. I think it would be very dumb of Microsoft not to have Carmack on the board. It would be very beneficial to them to have Carmack on their side.
If this is all fact, I'm just unsure of what Carmack's interest is. Speculation will probably go wild...
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet, tasty beer."
Maybe Carmack will wring a better-than-pathetic OpenGL implementation out of MS and get it into Xbox?? Oh well, I can dream can't I!! Jono
John Carmack will make the X box a great platform!!
John Carmack has officially sold out!!! OpenGL is dead!!!
Get a fucking grip. Carmack is just a developer. He's the best at what he does and he's got a lot of expertise, but he's hardly capable of making or breaking a console platform. Additionally, nobody has said anything about DirectX vs. OpenGL wrt this deal - which is just a rumor anyway.
You guys sound like JeffK -- John Carmaeke is SMARtey ProraEMIng WiZARD MaN!!!!!
--Shoeboy
Oh dear,
.plan he said that the pain and time taken for D3D to gain parity with OpenGL wouldn't be worth it. So, even if he were to start using D3D (and he isn't AFAIK) he still wouldn't be selling out, he owes no allegiance to an API, API's are tools not religious icons, the only reason he disliked D3D was it's technical flaws and obfuscation. The cross platform non proprietary nature of OpenGL is a more recently recognized bonus for the games industry (but OpenGL's primary objective initially) and one I expect everyone except Microsoft loves.
you are misguided.
nVidia and Microsoft have stated that nVidia will support OpenGL on the XBox, INCLUDING support for all the advanced graphics features. DirectX is NOT the equivalent of OpenGL. D3D is the 3D component that competes with OpenGL. You can write code which calls DirectX AND OpenGL and Carmack has, he DOESN'T use the D3D part of DirectX.
DirectX will NEVER exist on Linux, Microsoft's whole strategy is to own the API's and deploy them exclusively on Win32 to lock the applications to that platform.
Carmack is NOT "in team with M$", at most he's advising them. He actually advised them on D3D a long time ago, OK, the advice was "throw it away", but he had lengthy meetings with M$ at the height of the D3D vs OpenGL wars years ago. Guess what his advice on XBox will be today? I'd guess he'll be advising them to support all the great features using OpenGL, including advice on OpenGL extensions. That isn't selling out, it's consistent with what his position has been for years. Infact Carmack has said from the outset that if D3D were better he'd use it but way back in his famous
This is not the death of OpenGL. In fact with D3D copying so much of OpenGL it would almost be a semantic argument if D3D weren't such a darned mess. Even with your nightmare scenario (which isn't going to transpire) porting D3D games to OpenGL should actually be pretty easy and Loki have already demonstrated this.
Unfortunately, Apple has ceased all development on QuickDraw3D. It is still available on the current versions of MacOS, but will not be available on MacOS X.
That is, no official version of QD3D will be available on MacOS X. There is always the Quesa project, which is a cross-platform library that runs on top of OpenGL and provides the same functionality as QuickDraw3D (with API-level compatibility). As to whether any game companies will actually use Quesa remains to be seen. (The project is open-source, licensed under the LGPL.)
In any case, I think it was a big mistake for Apple to stop development of QuickDraw 3D. It's a great API, not just for porting, but for doing original work as well. Look at Bugdom and Nanosaur, two fairly sophisticated 3D games that were written by a very small development team. That just goes to show how easy it is to develop using QD3D. Hopefully the Quesa project will keep it alive and maybe even increase its popularity.
Free Hans!
today there has been an article about "x is doomed" and now "carmack chooses the dark side".
big deal. i think the xbox is going to take a dump, other than the keyboard i use i know of no MS hardware that is a comm'l success.
the spec web benchmark reamed win2K, and a couple weeks ago a little 32/64 bit, full mutitasking os, complete with src code (that many of us know and love) hit some 97% of the win98 openGL performance.
so, even though JC has not had a lot of nice things to say about linux, my personal experience today was installing debian, NT4 and redhat on three dual cpu P3 500 dells, brand new, out of the box.
NT blue screened on machine 1, redhat and debian installed flawlessly. just for grins, i installed RH on machine 1 as well -- no problems whatsoever.
all three are burning in over the weekend. i'll check dell support monday for the NT install issues.
i think linux has a stong future, esp. with the big embedded/japan announcement a day or so ago. carmack has a right to his opinions on linux, and the right to "go MS".
choose your own path, and be proud of it. it ain't no big deal, except so many kids look up to carmack. from that point of view, it doesn't do a lot for the concept of open-mindedness, fairness or a free market. maybe he'll say something like those sports figures say : "i'm not a role model"...
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Geez, I don't think this really rates a news story...
I put off an interviewer with questions about the X-Box by saying that I was on the X-Box Advisory Board, and probably shouldn't discuss specifics, instead of just my usual "sorry, too busy" reply.
Here is the longer answer:
At last years CGDC, Tim Sweeny and I had a meeting with Bill Gates about the X-Box. It was not handled well.
For weeks ahead of time, I had been pressing for technical information so I could have something useful to comment on at the meeting. A couple days before the meeting, I finally got an email directing me to "look at this EETimes article, they are pretty close". Yeah. Ok.
So, we just wound up just talking about generalities.
A while later, I was contacted about being on the formal advisory board, with a promise that it wouldn't be like that "trophy meeting" at CGDC, but would be making critiques of real documents.
I am on a lot of advisory boards, and they vary quite a bit in level of participation.
3DFX's advisory board meets every quarter, and we go over detailed technical things. Unfortunately, the very first advisory board of over two years ago discussed a part that still hasn't shipped, so it is hard to say what the impact is.
Apple's gaming advisory board has met three times, and was moderately productive.
Nvidia listed me as a member of their technical advisory board in their IPO filing, but there has never been a group meeting. I meet with them a couple times a year privately, but I haven't had a whole lot to complain about or suggest to them since they got past the RIVA 128 (until the recent push for 64 bit color)-- they have been doing a great job.
All of the other companies just informally stop by everey once in a while to discuss things.
I had made some suggestions to microsoft about DirectSound and DirectInput in past years that were always at the wrong time to ever get acted upon, so I don't know what to expect from this board.
So far, microsoft seems to be sticking to the plan -- I got a big fat binder of stuff in today to look over before our meeting next week.
I'm all for the X-Box as a console platform. The graphics hardware is a lot cooler than PS2, and there are a lot of other things going for it. I am still uneasy about all the market protection issues that go with consoles, but I tend to think that microsoft is a more open company than many of the traditional console companies.
I want microsoft to make good products. Heck, I want everyone to make good products. Even at the height of the D3D vs OpenGL antagonism, I had always given them source drops of what I was working on, and freedom to use it for demonstrating new features.
I had hoped that they would use it as a real-world testbed for new features, rather than just dreaming them up and making the industry follow their plan without ever really testing things out.
In any case, talking with MS has no bearing on my development decisions. I'm still using OpenGL, and we are still planning simultanious releases for linux and MacOS-X. If things work out well with X-Box, that may be added to the list.
John Carmack
1) Michael Abrash (you know... quake bsp code!) works for MS, and works on the XBox dx implementation :) Try it. :)
2) nVidia will provide a full OpenGL ICD for the XBox. (as stated in numerous newsitems). Therefor: it's totally logical that Carmack is an advisor for the XBox, because he is advisor for several OpenGL Driver implementators. He knows what's needed to get performance on the thing.
3) So what! Just because it's a microsoft product doesn't it make bad. When it's from Sony it's cool but from MS it's bad? What do you want then... a bag of parts and elements and a manual to solder, fiddle and build the thing yourself ? (plus write the 3D api layer yourself, because all you have is a chipset layout). Sometimes stuff that just comes out of a box and works directly is pretty ok
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The XBox is simply another front on the "API wars".
If XBox is successful, Microsoft has another extremely powerful tool to further wedge DirectX into the minds of developers. Instead of OpenGL.
Microsoft's goal, in this, is to get developers writing primarily for the most popular platform - theirs: DirectX on Windows9x/NT/CE/XBox. Ports to other platforms, Unices, MacOS classic/x, ps/2, dreamcast, amiga, os/2 (I included the last two to illustrate what's going to happen to all the others) will be done later, if at all, there will be no parallel development if the gaming company has to get it to market fast and cheap, which is a necessity in this competitive world. Porting a DirectX game to OpenGL later will be a financial liability if you're talking about 30% or less of the combined market. The end result, less games on the minority platforms, less sales for minority platforms, market dominance, once again - didn't we learn this lesson in the 80's?
Why is the game-console important? Because, in the future, game-consoles will pick up other functions, they will get the non-PC market onto the internet - they will be the control-valve for all media - they will morph into settop boxes.
Maybe Carmack wants to get onto the advisory board to try to strongarm Microsoft into supporting OpenGL on XBox. At least that's what I'd like to believe. I'd like to believe that Carmack is still dedicated to cross-platform development, open standards, and a world where there's choice other than MS.
Obviously, by how Bungie got bought, Microsoft has some pretty compelling material supporting why developers should consider XBox. I hope that Carmack didn't bite that fishhook too.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Not only is this not news (Carmack IS on the board for XBox), but it's not surprising, since he is/was part of the committee that consults on DIRECTX.
And to top it off, it means NOTHING. So he's on the board? So what. Maybe they listen to him, maybe they don't. It's an ADVISORY board, and you can ignore advice.
All of that being said, The xBox folks are a bunch of smart people. I'm sure they'll listen to Carmack when he makes smart comments and suggestions. Frankly, Carmack might try to muscle people around so that everything works the way HE wants it to. What does it matter? It's a closed platform! But if his suggestions are good for the platform, then I'm sure he could be an asset.
Maybe Carmack signed up so that he can evangilize OpenGL to Microsoft and XBox developers.
He's got a vested commercial interest in OGL -- You don't think Quake III and Quake-engine will be ported to the XBox? He's there to make sure that his games run well, and his babies (Quake engines) continue to sell.
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