How id Lost Its Crown

The Next Generation site has an editorial up by veteran animator Steve Bowler discussing the loss of prestige id has suffered, at least in his eyes, as a result of the latest incarnation of Doom. From the article: "But one day, the industry changed. The consumer changed. It's hard to put one's finger on it. Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account. Call it braggadocio, or hubris, but Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market. Yes, it's upsetting. I tried not to admit it either. But it's undeniably true."

Re:Definite loss of steam

[Pluvius]

While I am not knocking their capabilities of offering state-of-the-art 3D gaming engines, do we really NEED a Quake 4? ...
I think id should stick to making game engines, and let other, more creative companies designe the game content

Interestingly enough, that's what id is doing with Quake 4. The game design responsibilities are being handled by Raven Software, the guys who did Jedi Knight 2 and Elite Force.

Rob

Re:Unreal Tournament 3

[The boojum]

"...and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3" So if he is talking about Unreal Tournament 2007, that would be Unreal Tournament 4 in the numbering scheme of how many Unreal Tournaments there have been. 1 would be Unreal Tournament (1999) 2 is Unreal Tournament 2003, 3 is Unreal Tournament 2004. Finally 4 is Unreal Tournament 2007.

I suspect he meant the upcoming Unreal Engine 3. Unreal and UT99 used the Unreal Engine 1. UT2k3 and UT2k4 both used the same basic Unreal Engine 2. UT2k7 will be based on the new Unreal Engine 3. Epic's Unreal Technology Roadmap [epicgames.com] has the details.

Re:Unreal Tournament 3

[Lord Crc]

Uh, Unreal Engine 3 is made by Epic, not id.

The joke was supposed to be something along the lines that Doom3 is barely more than Id's engine.