John Carmack Launches id Mobile, Criticizes Apple
Co-founder of id Software, John Carmack, recently spoke to GameDaily BIZ about launching new studio id Mobile and included his thoughts on the state of the largely-untapped, mobile gaming market. Carmack points out that mobile phones outnumber personal computers by 10 to 20 times, and there are over 100 times as many cellular handsets than there are gaming consoles. Those numbers add up to big opportunity for developers who are willing to simultaneously develop multiple, customized versions of their mobile titles. While the company has seen success with an iPod version of Doom, Carmack has concerns over the attention that Apple is (or more accurately, is not) giving gaming on it's hugely popular new devices.
"We've certainly been looking at it but Steve Jobs and I have not been seeing really eye to eye on a lot of important issues. We were in a fairly heated argument at the last WWDC [Worldwide Developers Conference] and we've had a few follow-ups. I have an iPhone right now and it's a platform I would enjoy developing for but Apple is not taking progressive steps in regards to [gaming]." -- John Carmack, co-founder id Software
I'm glad that someone has conveyed the desire to see quality, native games running on the amazing little device to Steve Jobs. I've been enjoying my iPhone for some time now, but the Safari sandbox handed to developers seems to be a bit limiting in the gaming department. Of course, compared to most of the crappy quality mobile games that are being pushed on wireless subscribers, even Bejeweled 2 is fun again. And it's free.
Carmack on id Mobile, Crap Games, and Why iPod Sucks [GameDaily]
[via iLounge]
TexCub
Posted to Video Games on 17 November 2007
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: apple, doom, gaming, id software, iphone, ipod, john carmack, mobile, steve jobs
3rd party apps are coming in Feb. Better late than never. So this guy can TFSU.
Now on the mac it would be nice if apple created a game creation studio in the style of Xcode and DashCode. Sort of a PlayCode or CoreGaming. It would show that Apple is serious about Mac gaming. Something that would just allow developers a unified spot to start from and know that they are supported by Apple. They would also need to create an elegant way of porting DirectX based games, since that seems to be the standard these days.
I don't see apple doing any of this though. If people really want mac gaming, then it can be done. There is little profit and an even smaller user base in PC gaming. There is no incentive. Add to that reduced PC exclusives, more and more people flocking to the Xbox 360 to do their game playing, and saving the PC for web surfing and such, there is little reason to go after this market.
I'd rather just use my 360 and save the HD space on my computer's. The games are just as good and play just as well. Thats just me though and I know the hard core PC gamers insist on their keyboard and mouse.