Quake IV Confirmed For QuakeCon

Gamespot has the word that Quake IV will get some face time at QuakeCon this year. id CEO Hollenshead released the information at the Xbox Doom 3 launch event. From the article: "Over the past few years, PC game sales have either declined a little bit or stayed relatively flat, while console game sales have seen mostly double-digit growth. I don't know if we'll be releasing multiple SKUs at the same time, but as for PS3 and Xbox 2 and so on, yes, we will continue our development effort on the consoles."

Comments

Mouse and keyboards

[mfterman]

My own feeling is that it's only a matter of time before consoles start getting USB mice and keyboards as standard or at least common equipment for consoles. Consoles are slowly but surely evolving into low end dedicated gaming PCs. When that happens, I tend to expect that there will be an even sharper decline in PC games produced, though for moddable games, I expect PCs to be around as the modding development platform of choice.

Re:Mouse and keyboards

[imitier]

As someone who until recently did all his FPS gaming on consoles, I have to say I prefer a dual-analog controller over a mouse and keyboard. Having recently built a PC that can play games like Half-Life 2 and Unreal Tournamentl 2004, I'm catching up on a backlog of PC gaming, but I find the mouse and keyboard combo to feel somewhat unnatural, and a lot less immersive, than a console-style dual analog controller (PS2 or XBox, take your pick.) I understand that the mouse and keyboard is probably faster and more accurate, especially if that's what you're used to, but even with that in mind, it just doesn't feel good to me. I spend all day working with a mouse and keyboard -- I don't want to use the same equipment to play games. Playing FPS with dual sticks just feels more immersive to me -- the increased precision of a mouse and keyboard doesn't make up for the loss of immersion.

Now, that's just my opinion, and I wouldn't claim to speak for anyone else on the matter, but all the same I wouldn't be so sure that everyone playing FPS on consoles is in a rush to get a mouse and keyboard set up.

Re:Mouse and keyboards

[Rayonic]

You could take a typical modern console gamepad, and replace the rightmost analog stick with a small-ish trackball.

Thus the trackball would be for mouselook, the left analog stick would be for movement (like WASD, but more precise), and the shoulder buttons could be for fire, jump, etc.

Re:Mouse and keyboards

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell modded this insightful? It completely misses the point.

By and large, people playing console fpses on dual-analogue controllers do NOT play against people playing fpses on a mouse and keyboard. It doesn't matter that a PC player would beat you... you're never going to play him. There's a big imbalance in the PC gaming market; for years now, the fps scene has been about who has the best system, display, mouse etc. A mediocre player can improve their performance by upgrading their system. In the console arena, people are almost always playing on standard hardware.

I look through this thread at the number of "OMG consoles suck, my PC could 0wnz0r them and with my mouse and keyboard I COULD BEAT ANY CONSOLE PLAYER" replies. Part of me wonders how many of these posters are just afraid of a level playing field.

Re:Mouse and keyboards

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, another fine example of the wonderful, arrogant posts we get about "real gaming". I love the way that people who consider themselves "hardcore" gamers need to go on about their skill levels constantly and put down those who play other games. It seems to me that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually constitutes "skill" here.

Simply put, "skill" in a game is the ability to perform well within the constraints of the game. Is Kasparov a poor chess player because he can only move the Bishops diagonally? I'm actually a PC fps player historically and while I've messed around with Halo 2 over Live, I don't consider myself particularly good at it. However, if you watch a few of the top-level Halo 2 players fighting, the level of skill is on a par with anything in the PC gaming world.

In many ways, console gaming will prove to be a better determinant of skill in the long run. On a console, everybody is forced to use the same hardware and input devices. On a PC, the player with the better (and usually more expensive) hardware will have an inate advantage, allowing a mediocre player with richer parents to beat a more skilled player on a basic system.

sweeet ... I can't wait to play the next Quake

[2TecTom]

If Doom was any indication of the visuals going into Q4, I'm anticipating an awesome game. I, for one, have gotten more entertainment from Id and John Carmack than from any other company or person. As far as I'm concerned, Id rocks like no other. Thanks guys. Please, keep up the good work.

Oh, and by the way, consoles are for kids!

Are you kidding????

[SvnLyrBrto]

> and the keyboard/mouse configuration is less intuitive
> then a gamepad.

If you're NOT kidding, you're completely out of your mind.

Back in college, I had a group of non-CS-major friends who thought they were hot stuff on Goldeneye, for the N64. As I understand it, Goldeneye is STILL considered just about the best console FPS, and one of the best N64 games, ever released. I thought it was rather low-quality and pedestrian, myself. But whatever. A couple of them could even beat the game on "00 Level". Oooooo...

Eventually, I finally got them to come into the lab at night, and set up a Quake 2 deathmatch. For starters, only being able to play a game with just four people at a time, and being confined to one corner of the screen is lame. But I digress. I spanked them... even the "I finished Goldeneye on 00 Level" guys. And I don't just mean I won. I totally dominated. And on real FPSs, I was never really even that GOOD.... strictly average. But playing with those POS console controllers, and their associated crutches (cheats like auto-aim, for example) instilled so many bad habits into them that even the best were all but helpless against just an average "mouse and keyboard" player.

It'll be interesting to see if the xBox2 and PS3 versions of Q4 will be able to play on-line against the real version. Specifically, it'd be interesting to see the deathmatch kill stats between them. I'd bet good money that said stats would bear me out.

cya,
john

Re:Multiplayer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't seem to find the URL at the moment, but I've certainly heard that Quake 4 is a single-player oriented sequel to Quake 2. I think there was originally talk of Quake 3 style multiplayer, but this vanished around the time that more details of the Doom 3 engine (such as minimum specifications and network model) because apparent. From what I've heard, the Doom 3 netcode just doesn't scale all that well above four players. You can do it - it just won't behave nicely.

Basically, I wouldn't get your hopes up for Quake 4 to be the next big "competition" fps. I suspect that title will eventually go to either Halo 2 or a new version of Counter-Strike. My main hope for Quake 4's multiplayer is that it will actually give us a co-op mode.

About PC gaming...

[AzraelKans]

PC gaming quite simply can not die And never will. Its impossible for a small independent company to release a game in any other platform and its more technologically advanced that any console in the market (and will always be since is upgradeable) MS mentioned in their keynote the PC will always a great lab for gaming and gameplay (and for once they are right).

Its expensive for developers to release boxed games for Pc's thats true. But is not as much if they get rid of the box and provide it as downloadable content. Im not sure how efficient that method is. But it certainly is the less expensive choice for any developer (no royalties to pay, no publishing, no international/national orders shipping and handling, nothing! all they need is a pc port of their game , a cc handler and a download source, thats it) another cool detail is that since pc gaming is less populated it could actually be considered a "niche" of sorts.

The only actual problem with pc gaming I see now, is how video card manufacturers are basically self destroying a part of the market, most probably they are aware than their newer card prices are unreachable for almost any pc enthusiast. Yet, they try to set them as the industry "standard" news flash: you can only call it an standard if the majority of the population prefers it over alternatives. (I mean seriously why cant new games WORK with an ati 9200 ? or geforce mx,5200 cards? those are actually affordable cards and to my knowledge they are still available in a good ammount of pcs)