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Despite New Owner, id Still Lives Or Dies By Their Engines

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-want-to-bunny-hop-in-elder-scrolls-v dept.

The Guardian has an article about id Software's status after being purchased by ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) not long ago. While id gained considerable financial stability out of the deal, it's clear that what Bethesda has to gain is access to top-of-the-line engine technology, which they've often needed to license. id's Todd Hollenshead said, "The videogames business is defined by technology, which is why guys like JC [John Carmack] are still so significant. Consumers may not be as in touch with the intricacies as they used to be, but you can still make significant, impactful change. We're confident Rage will be one of them..." He also mentions that "the PC market has receded in terms of significance," a sentiment evidenced by id's aggressive expansion into the iPhone games market.

2 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Engine is Their Gravy by Ant+P. · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also, there is no way they're going to stick with the name "Rage". I believe they learned once before that you need to use your engine as a marketing tool by tying it to your identity as a business and not calling it something obscure.

    You mean by calling it something like... I dunno, "id Tech 5"?

  2. Re:Reduced Focus = Reduced Significance by blahplusplus · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Freespace had a software renderer, so how did that one bomb?"

    Descent 3 and Fs2 both had lower then expected sales, D3 and FS2 were both 3D accelerator only.

    Descent 3 didn't technically bomb but it was nowhere near the sales of D1 and D2 according to interplay it sold "respectable numbers" in contrast to Freesapce 2.

    Descent 1 and 2 by contrast could run on any system. Back then (around 1996/7/8), 3D accelerators did not have enough market penetration outside of certain genre's, Mainly FPS (quake, etc) and this did a lot to deter PC game developers because they didn't understand the dynamics of what hardware was out there. If there was something like Steam back then giving hardware surveys the could have made a lot more intelligent decisions in terms of making games.

    Freespace 2 bombed, the first one didn't obviously (they had an expansion, silent threat). But Freespace 2 was 3D accelerators only, also note a game like Starcraft's popularity in korea was partly due to the fact that it does not *require* 3d acceleration and can run on most any system.