Carmack On the Wii U and PS Vita

Gamespot spoke at length with id Software's John Carmack at E3 about upcoming FPS RAGE (which is now only a few months away from release), as well as his thoughts on the new console offerings revealed by Nintendo and Sony. He seems optimistic about the Wii U, and rather less so about the Vita. "But you know the technology level on [the Wii U] brings it up to parity with the other consoles, which is nice for us. Previously, the Wii was not a target. Id Tech 5 was just not suitable for the Wii at all. ... now that we're looking at another platform that is eminently suitable for the technology, I'm sure we're going to try and bring it up on there." On the other hand, Carmack and Tim Willits both expressed concerns about whether Nintendo users were the right demographic for id games. Of the Vita, he said, "I wouldn't want to be the executive making the decision to launch a new portable gaming machine in the post-smartphone world. I think that they've picked as eminently a suitable hardware spec as they could for that. ... But of course, by the time they actually ship, there may be smartphones or these tablets with twice as much power as what they're shipping with on there. And a year or two after that, it's going to look pretty pokey."

Comments

Parent is NSFW

[Asmor]

Picture of a penis ejaculating. Just FYI. I will say, impressive timing on the shot.

Re:Parent is NSFW

[CODiNE]

Anybody from Tennessee wanna click that?
Asmor gets the finders fee, I get the fixer fee.

Hmm

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You know the thing about the Vita... I think I would have been really really excited about it, but man I sure am soured on Sony right now.

This may sound a little counter-intuitive, but I wish Sony would license a bunch of MAME ROMs and create a competitor to the Wii store. I've played MAME on an OLED device before and... you know, there's something about each pixel emitting light... it's like you're actually using a CRT again.

I'm just babbling, but man, I can't believe this machine was unveiled and all I did was make a fart noise.

Re:Hmm

[Stormwatch]

I've played MAME on an OLED device before and... you know, there's something about each pixel emitting light... it's like you're actually using a CRT again.

Then... buy a CRT monitor?

Re:Hmm

[Rosy At Random]

CRTs have a warm fuzziness that smoothed over the lo-res, high-contrast display inputs and made them look washed-out like 70s TV/photography. You can emulate that to some extent on digital displays, but...

Also, I realise that this would have little to do with OLED similarities, except perhaps by association.

Re:Carmack

[petman]

You're the reason for this.

How can you game without physical controls?

[Anonymous Coward]

I own a DS (and don't have plans to buy a 3DS) but I hardly use it anymore because I rarely find myself away from a PC or TV when I feel like gaming. However, there are the infrequent and brief moments not long enough to justify carrying a separate device where I do try to play a game on my phone. Except, every game I've tried besides the simple puzzle/strategy game had absolutely atrocious controls. I truly don't understand the hype behind the future of gaming on touchscreen phones. How can you play a game where the controls are on the same surface you're trying to view? Regarding accelerometers, they sound great to me in theory, but in practice work rather poorly in the games I've tried too.

Re:How can you game without physical controls?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I've done quite a bit of playing on just about any portable system you can think of and, in my opinion, the difference is mainly about what types of games you really want to play. I'd rather play Ridge Racer on my 3DS and I'd rather play Back to the Future on my iPad. I actually even prefer BTTF on the iPad vs. the way superior PC version simply because I like to lay down on the couch while I'm playing.

There's a lot of blah blah blah about iPhones etc killing Nintndo's market, but I'm really not sold on that idea for exactly the reasons you've mentioned. I do feel, though, that Nintendo should better embrace the on-line store idea. Changing cartridges is really becoming a nuisance.

Re:How can you game without physical controls?

[Tei]

Some games:
  - DungeonRaid
  - Sentinel 3
  - Tiny Tower
  - geoDefense

The problem with phone games is that almost all games are aimed at the casuals market. The "core gamers" have no way to find the good games, that are lost in a sea of generic crap for casuals. This also make so people that could have build a game with deep strategy/etc.. create a simpler game for casuals. Is more a information problem than anything else. IF a single website manage to focus on publiciting this type of game over others, then the information problem is solved. The reason no blog/website has focus on that, is that theres very few games on that type, and is very very hard to find, and the fact that even core games enjoy some casual games. A casual game will not fill with joy a core gamers (compare this to DungeonRaid, that can make you lose your job), but is enteirtan enough.
So the whole thing is like a vicious cycle. The hardware is neutral to what you can built in it. But the humans expect some type of soulless simple casual game, and that is what is made.

Smartphones do not make good gaming systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartphones aren't good for gaming for one simple reason: the controls suck. Aside from the Xperia Play, I've only seen one other smartphone that might *sort of* work for gaming and that's the LG Optimus Q with its qwerty keyboard and built in trackball.

Re:Smartphones do not make good gaming systems

[crossmr]

There are some game styles for which it's okay, but mostly no.. they're terrible. I do game on my iphone, but it's more about convenience and boredom than preference. You know there are 3rd party companies making dock devices for the iphone, a Korean company here makes a DMB receiver that you can plug in to receive TV service in various countries.
I heard there is a GPS device you can get that goes around your iphone. Why doesn't some company make a wrapper than has a D-pad and 4 buttons on it. Devs could make to it as an alternative input, it would be huge. Trivial to carry around if you've carrying a bag, and certainly not any more bulky than some of the other stuff.
You could even combine it with a full wrap around case. so that you could leave it together sometimes rather than always take it apart.
You might be looking at adding what? 1.5-2" to the overall length but not really anything to the width. (yes inevitable spam jokes)

Re:Smartphones do not make good gaming systems

[DrXym]

It's a huge problem. Finger games like Angry Birds are okay. Anything requiring a controller or shooting or responsiveness is bloody awful. I downloaded some kind of Geometry Wars clone for my Android phone. The game was great but it was virtually unplayable because the controls were gimped by the format. The game used two circles on the screen to represent thumbsticks but within 60 seconds you'd find your fingers sticking to the phone and your ship became virtually uncontrollable. It also rules out any kind of emulator play - I have a ZX Spectrum emulator (Marvin) which runs magnificently except for the fact you can't play any damned games through lack of proper controls.

The Experia Play looks interesting and at least it has some hard buttons but I think it needs a broader coalition of phone manufacturers and Google to come up with a reasonable game control specification, one which programmers can utilise if present and for phone makers to implement how they see fit. Perhaps it would have a couple of profiles from the most basic (roller ball / optical thing), to dpad, to analogue controllers. There should even be a requirement for the controller to be part of the phone, it could be a separate bluetooth thingy which meant 3rd party peripherals could fill the void.

So until smart phones get their act together I think there will be scope for the likes of the Vita & 3DS. Personally I expect the Vita to appear in some phone form factor at some point anyway. It's basically a tablet / phone anyway in its 3G format so it doesn't seem a huge leap to consider a hybrid although it would probably have to be smaller and run android or something to be of use in that capacity.

Re:Smartphones do not make good gaming systems

[iamhassi]

"So until smart phones get their act together I think there will be scope for the likes of the Vita & 3DS."

The 3DS will do fine but the Vita will flop, as has all recent portable game systems released by Sony. Their market now plays games on smartphones while the market for the 3DS are usually too young for expensive smartphones and people will buy it for the innovative 3D.

Smartphone gaming is the future. Apparently you guys have a bit of a problem with touchscreens but hundreds of millions of iOS devices have been sold, the public has spoken. Call of Duty: Zombies was one of the most popular iOS games of 2010 and it features those two onscreen joysticks you hate so much.

It comes down to this: new game came out, you can either buy $200 portable system and pay $40 for the game or download it to your iOS device for $10. Guess what most people will do?

Re:Smartphones do not make good gaming systems

[WhirlwindMonk]

It comes down to this: new game came out, you can either buy $200 portable system and pay $40 for the game or buy a $200 iOS device that will get a newer revision three times before the next portable gaming system comes out and download it to your iOS device for $10. Guess what most people will do?

Fixed for accuracy.

Lead.

[headkase]

Carmack used to lead the 3D Engine sector around. A bit of history, Quake, is the grand-daddy that started it all: first true-3D Game. And it was Carmack. Now, Epic Games went on to win the "licensing" war and that is why practically every game today has a bit of Unreal Engine 3 in it. Carmack however, is still one of the smartest cookies around: he has the ability to keep on pumping out revolution after revolution. And now that Zenimax has folded id Software into it: Carmack doesn't have to worry about those pesky "business" aspects anymore and can just concentrate on where he shines: code.

Re:Lead.

[imroy]

A bit of history, Quake, is the grand-daddy that started it all: first true-3D Game.

What, no Wolfenstein or Doom? They weren't entirely 3D, but they were what started iD Software on the road to success. Oh, and IIRC, the first truely 3D game was Descent.

Re:Lead.

[mwvdlee]

I distinctly remember playing 3D games well before VGA or even IBM PC was invented. They were mostly a few lines of wireframe 3D, but 3D nonetheless.

Re:Lead.

[VortexCortex]

Decent is a game I wish still existed. Same with Wing Commander. These games (both space flight/combat) were very fun, and Descent had some very fun multiplayer.

Oh, It still exists., now on wiiware... Since the source code was released, it's been and ported to at least XP (don't know about Vista or 7 -- been a while since I had a MS OSs).

(Wait...What the hell am I doing replying to an Anonymous Coward's wall of text?!)

Re:Lead.

[wildstoo]

I posted a few months ago, waxing nostalgic for 6DOF games and the Descent series specifically. Nice to know I'm not the only one who still wants them.

There are a few Descent and Descent 2 source ports, the best of which is probably D2X

.

Here's a thread demonstrating some of the graphical features of the port: http://www.descent2.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1169.

It's still an awesome game.

PS Vita...

[Sollord]

The PS Vita is basically a 5 inch tablet in a gaming friendly frame given it's touch abilities there no technical reason for Sony not to have an app market beyond the basic ps store for games

Elite.

[headkase]

You are correct, and the most notable one I can think of (one I actually played on my Commodore 64) is: Elite. That game was so far ahead of it's time that computers in it's era simply could not do it justice. It's eerily similar to games like Eve Online today.

Re:Elite.

[ld a,b]

A 3D T-Rex chased people around on ZX-81s with 1024 bytes of RAM two years before Elite was published.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze

Re:The innovation on display in Rage is staggering

[Hadlock]

Seeing Rage demoed back to back with Fallout 3 freshly in our minds, Borderlands having been released three months prior and New Vegas looking shiny and new at E3, there was a bit of buyer apathy when we saw YAPAOWG (yet another post-apocolyptic open-world game).

Rage simply exists to fund the engine it's built around. It's nice when you develop a new engine for the next 3-5 years worth of games, and can pay for all of it's development in a single title. Everything after that is pure profit.

Bethesda has iDtech, EA has Frostbite (and others), and then there's always Crytech and Unreal, but it's nice to have an inhouse engine for use with your other titles.

Re:The innovation on display in Rage is staggering

[Trilkin]

This is as relevant now as it was then...

Re:The innovation on display in Rage is staggering

[Elbereth]

As opposed to what? The latest Bioware RPG, where you have three dialogue options (Angelic, Satanic, and Snarky), act as a glorified FedEx courier, and use extreme violence to solve every problem you face? Or maybe you prefer the latest indie puzzle game, which is a direct ripoff of either Tetris or Sokoban (apparently the only two puzzle games to ever exist, although there are rumors of a third archetype called "breakout"). Or maybe you prefer Civilization X, which is just like Civilization IX, except it has Morocco as a playable civilization this time! Or there's always SimCity, where you build a city. Again. Just like the rest of the SimCity games. Let's not even get into racing games, which haven't evolved since the very first generation.

I like Bioware, Firaxis, and Maxis as much as the next guy, but... seriously... what are expecting? You can tear down any genre, and in those genres there are always going to be the complicated/innovative and the streamlined/derivative games. id makes mindless, uncomplicated action games, where you kill everything that moves. Don't like that? Don't play it. Some of us like that kind of gameplay. It sounds like you're more demanding, and that's fine. I love complex, deep games, but when I play an FPS, I generally just want to blow shit up and/or shoot people in the face. I don't want to deal with any complexity beyond that, when I'm playing an FPS, because it just draws time away from blowing shit up... and, frankly, the idea of someone begging for his life or limping around sounds disturbing to me. I like shooting at pixels, not humans. Anyway, why would I want wide open worlds to explore, enemies that beg for their life or limp, or AI when I'm going to be playing multiplayer deathmatches 99% of the time? Scratch that. 100% of the time. It sounds to me like you want a wholly different genre... some kind of console game, where you play solo, solve puzzles, and explore the world. That sounds boring as fuck to me, but, then again, I like FPS games.

Re:The innovation on display in Rage is staggering

[wildstoo]

I agree with some of your post, but this line is ridiculous:

Let's not even get into racing games, which haven't evolved since the very first generation.

Bullshit. There has been as much (or as little, as you seem to think) innovation in that genre as in any other. There are racing sims, rally sims, arcade racers, combat racers, sandbox racers and further sub-genres of each one, with almost every vehicle imaginable represented at some point. Every aspect of racing games has evolved greatly over the history of racing games; the physics, the graphics, the interaction with other cars and the environment, the organization and structure of the events, the realism. Go and read the Wikipedia article on racing games and then tell me there's been no innovation. If you still don't see it, it's because you're choosing not to.

I suspect that you're just not a fan of the genre, and your justification for saying that it hasn't evolved will be along the lines of "but after all this time they're still just driving around a track!", when of course driving around a track is exactly the point of most racing games. What do you expect them to become? On the one hand you complain that there's very little innovation in games and on the other you cite that the simplicity of the id-style FPS is something that appeals to you.

What do you really want?