Interesting Interview w/ John Carmack about Wii U, Vita, etc

[dsheinem]

http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6318725/e3 ... t-gen-rage

-comparison of the 360 to the SNES
-comparison of the Vita to smartphones
-discussion of Doom 4 (and beyond!)
-discussion of Wii U hardware as "being up to parity" with PS3/360

Anyway, I am a big Carmack fan so it was interesting to hear some of his E3 impressions. I'll be buying Rage for the PC as iD games feel most at home there (and really shine graphically), but it sounds like he's really given a lot of thought to console and portable hardware from this gen and next.

[CFFJR]

Cool stuff.

I'm excited about any relevant info for Doom 4. Hopefully something is revealed soon.

Kinda surprises me to hear that Rage 2 is already a possibility though, especially the idea of it being released across two generations of systems. You'd think they'd go for the newer stuff exclusively, since that game is guaranteed to be a high profile release.

I'm also curious to see what, if anything, they'll do with the Wii U. Though if I'm being honest it'll probably be ignored. Carmack might be interested in it, but that doesn't mean the company will be.

[isiolia]

Nice article, thanks for the link.

Kinda surprises me to hear that Rage 2 is already a possibility though, especially the idea of it being released across two generations of systems. You'd think they'd go for the newer stuff exclusively, since that game is guaranteed to be a high profile release.

I'm also curious to see what, if anything, they'll do with the Wii U. Though if I'm being honest it'll probably be ignored. Carmack might be interested in it, but that doesn't mean the company will be.

Seeing an id game get ported all over the place isn't usually too much of a surprise, given that part of their business is licensing their engine. It makes sense, in this day and age, that they'd want to get id Tech 5 (and beyond) running on everything feasible, including the Wii U.

[Gnashvar]

I just hope they don't feel the need to use the new controller if it's not required at all.

[irixith]

I just hope they don't feel the need to use the new controller if it's not required at all.

Scared of change? No problem! There are these great consoles called the Atari 2600, NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Master System, Genesis, Saturn, PC-Engine, etc, etc, etc to serve all of your gaming needs. Not to mention the ol' standby, the personal computer. Never worry about motion control or new-fangled peripherals ever again!

/heavy dose of sarcasm

Why not try and use the new controller in a different way? We seem to have plateau'd on the graphics front, as least where cost of development is concerned. It would be awfully cool to actually have something different in my gameplay in the new generation.

[Gnashvar]

I just hope they don't feel the need to use the new controller if it's not required at all.

Scared of change? No problem! There are these great consoles called the Atari 2600, NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Master System, Genesis, Saturn, PC-Engine, etc, etc, etc to serve all of your gaming needs. Not to mention the ol' standby, the personal computer. Never worry about motion control or new-fangled peripherals ever again!

/heavy dose of sarcasm

Why not try and use the new controller in a different way? We seem to have plateau'd on the graphics front, as least where cost of development is concerned. It would be awfully cool to actually have something different in my gameplay in the new generation.

Nah I'm not scared of change I just think I had enough of Wii games that "could have been" if they hadn't tried so hard to implement motion controls.

[isiolia]

I just hope they don't feel the need to use the new controller if it's not required at all.

It's not - but I think Carmack's point about it being like the DS screen is quite valid. Nearly anything can take some advantage of it, as opposed to motion controls.

All a cross platform game really needs to do there is take something that isn't always visible - map, inventory, scoreboard, etc - and slap it on the screen there.

[irixith]

What's the point of developing for Wii U if you don't examine the new controller as a possibility for your game, anyway? Part of the whole desire for Wii games is that they can offer something -different- than what everyone else is doing. Sure, not every game needs to have it thrown in there just because, but it seems like with just the smallest amount of lateral thinking, it could be beneficial to just about any genre of game.

[Ack]

So we can have 30 demons crawling all over you on there.

Oh man, I can hardly wait to see what Doom 4 will be like.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

So we can have 30 demons crawling all over you on there.

Oh man, I can hardly wait to see what Doom 4 will be like.

Hehe. That statement caught my eye too.