Skip to Content

John Carmack planning a "graphical tour-de-force" for the iPhone

by Mike Schramm Jul 30th 2008 at 7:00AM

Ah, game developers (especially EA game developers, of which id software's John Carmack is now one, after their announcement at E3 that they'd work together to publish games). They thrive on hype, and live, it seems sometimes, off of speculation. That's probably why Carmack has told Forbes that not only does he love his iPhone, and not only does he not want to "announce anything specifically," but id wants to make a game for the iPhone and "it would be," according to Carmack, "a graphical tour de force." See what we mean? Ah, game developers.

Anna Kang, who's the president of id Mobile (no relation), says that any id game they might be working on for the iPhone wouldn't be a new IP, so that puts it very much in the range of a Doom, Wolfenstein, or Quake game, and considering that another Wolfenstein sequel is being worked on right now, that probably makes it the most likely.

For his part, Carmack sounds really excited to have the iPhone as a platform (especially since he hasn't always seen eye-to-eye with Apple) -- he equates it in terms of power to a PS2 or Xbox, and says that a company could easily shell out $10 million on an iPhone game, be it a first person shooter or a deep MMORPG. But he admits that the 99-cent sales in the App Store can't support that yet, and it probably wouldn't be the best thing for id Mobile to pour their resources into something like that quite yet. Nevertheless, we'll wait and see what they come up with.

[via Joystiq]

View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Analysis / Opinion Gaming Software Developer

Ah, game developers (especially EA game developers, of which id software's John Carmack is now one, after their announcement at E3 that...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

8 Comments

Filter by:
SubGenius

I would love a first person shooter where I could use the iPhone as a virtual gun to shoot real people. Kind of like laser tag with iPhones. With 7+ million iPhones out there, it could turn into a massive multiplayer game that is actually played offline.

July 31 2008 at 11:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
imatt

old news.

also: what about Liu Kang?

July 30 2008 at 11:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sean

Nothing in this article says he's "planning" anything. Sounds like he's just emitting brain bubbles to me.

July 30 2008 at 10:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
alex

Cool stuff,

can't wait to have a decent shoot'em'up on my iPhone ;) maybe with some multiplayer or enhanced reality ;) iPhone is becoming a real game platform - w00t
Reminds me of a LSD story from http://lifesuxdaily.com :
"This morning my girlfriend left me for a guy she met on World of Warcraft... LifeSux..."

Now that girls don't need a PC to play we are doomed ;)

July 30 2008 at 9:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Badr

If someone can make an exciting game on the iPhone and push that type of hardware to the extreme is John "God" Carmack.

July 30 2008 at 9:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
matmccoy

not quake, please not quake.

July 30 2008 at 8:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Drew

My bet would be on an iphone version of orcs and elves especially as a first game on a new platform.

July 30 2008 at 8:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kelmon

You've got to wonder how the user would control a First Person Shooter style game given the lack of physical controls on the devices. The accelerometer evidentially works quite well for racing games (here's hoping for a version of WipeOut) but I don't see it working as well (if at all) in an FPS. Perhaps id will surprise and release something based in one of their existing game universes that isn't a FPS...

July 30 2008 at 8:24 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.