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."

Parent is NSFW

[Asmor]

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

Lead.

[headkase]

Carmack used to lead the 3D Engine sector around. A bit of history, Quake [wikipedia.org], 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 [gamasutra.com] anymore and can just concentrate on where he shines: code.

Elite.

[headkase]

You are correct, and the most notable one I can think of (one I actually played on my Commodore 64) is: Elite [wikipedia.org]. 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 [wikipedia.org] today.

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. [interplay.com], now on wiiware... Since the source code [descent2.com] 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 [descent2.de]

.

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

It's still an awesome game.