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id: PC 'Worth Supporting' But 'More of A Junior Partner'
by Aaron Linde, Aug 11, 2008 10:42am PDTSteadily decreasing PC software figures have prompted acclaimed Doom and Quake creator id Software to focus more on consoles than PCs for the future, id president John Carmack has revealed.
"It's hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration," Carmack told Tom's Games at this year's QuakeCon. "But the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles."
The statement follows remarks made by id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead at last year's Game Developer's Conference, where he claimed that that "piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform" at last year's Game Developers Conference.
"We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we're not making decisions around the PC," Carmack added. "It's probably more of the junior partner in the cross-platform strategy, although obviously, our day-to-day development is predominately on the PC."
As for future titles, Carmack further noted that the company's post-apocalyptic shooter Rage (PC, PS3, 360) and Doom follow-up would definitely appear on the platform.
"We certainly expect Rage and the Doom project on the PC," Carmack stated. "We're contractually obligated to have Rage on the PC, and I would be stunned if we did not do Doom 4 for the PC. It would just be wrong. Even if it was a marginal business case, we would still do it because it's the right thing to do."
Comments
Let's see people continue to be in denial.
(no not that PC game is dying, no one has or is saying that).
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So id, Crytek, and Epic all feel that the PC isn't a viable sales platform anymore.
3 developers of some of the most mediocre games of the last few years. Gorgeous, technologically impressive games, to be sure. But insanely mediocre.
Good riddance.
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I think a lot of former-PC developers working on Consoles is a great thing because these are AAA developers making great games and pushing the boundaries of the platform. PC gamers (of which I am definitely one) are coming across as very snobby in this transition. They get all elitist and superior talking down to console owners like children. But games like Bioshock and Mass Effect are the real deal. These are not pc-lite games... and they were basically console games ported to the PC.
If some of these games are slightly simplified either by the user-interface or the depth of the gameplay... simple isn't always bad. A good developer and make 'simple' --> good (and keep enough depth) to make the game great.
And even if console games are somewhat 'light' compared to the old PC games of the past... who's saying they wont continue to grow in depth as time goes on... because that seems to be the way they are going? I'm kind of getting sick of this whole console vs. PC thing... I have both and enjoy both. The endless bickering back in forth is really foolish.
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But I started gaming on consoles (circa Atari 400) and it is just coming back around again. There is hope for the PC, but not in the near term I think.
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This article, please meet this article: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54128
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-He wasn't saying PC playing is OMG OMG DYING
-He wasn't saying ID makes the best games (or even good ones, even though he prolly does and should think that :P)
-He wasn't saying consoles are better
-He wasn't saying people don't play PC games anymore
He was saying that the profits, you know the thing all companies aim for, are no longer relatively as high on the PC platform as they were, and hence making games solely for the platform is no longer as viable a strategy as it once was, from a financial point of view. Also, he expressed that they specifically _DO_ have love the the PC as a platform, and it's obvious he wishes that the current trend in game sales doesn't continue to the point where supporting PC is not profitable enough for publishers to bother supporting it at all.
And for this we get people flaming his/their games and counter-arguing points he never made or tried to make. Sadness.
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I don't mean to imply that those games are bad (they're not) but they're also nothing special. id hasn't done anything really amazing in quite a while, so I won't consider it much of a loss if they put PC development on the back burner.
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If he thinks PC IS still worth supporting, I'm not worried in the least.
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I'm sad to see gaming take the low route as far as technology is concerned. You'll get bigger audiences with consoles but depth is going to suffer a whole bunch. Not to mention possible innovation slowdowns as a result. The biggest loser is going to be user created material breathing new life into games though. I'm sad to see this happen, it's a loss.
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The fact that they haven't released a decent game since Q3 is what explains their low sales.
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I really don't care where I play my games, I just want more control options...
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I cannot remember the last time I played Doom 3 or Quake III Arena and I know for a fact that I got about ten times the mileage from Quake I than I did with any of its sequels. Maybe the new Rage IP will open things up a bit that'll shift away from one-dimensional shooters and keep players coming back.
I'd agree with the shift, but not to the extreme in which people of late are painting it.
That said, Rage may or may not be awesome, like any game that's not yet released. id was a vastly influential company, but at this point I think their place as monumental genre-definer is over. They've made their huge contributions to the industry, and that's more than most companies can claim, so now we just sit back and hope they can make some good games. If not... oh well. At least a bitchin' graphics engine came about.
And that, it should be mentioned, has NO bearing on their insight into the industry. John Carmack's clearly a sharp guy and worth hearing out on just about anything with which he's involved. The quality of recent work and potential of future work doesn't affect the fact that they've been in the biz for a long time now, so to me they're worth a listen.
Whats Id's sales numbers on consoles? Equally bad?
While Doom3 was a huge leap in graphics, the game play left a lot to be desired, especially when comparing it to what other developers were doing at the time.
People are really sick of all of these quake and doom sequels that offer the same exact game play with with only a bump in graphics. That's a big part of why sales are suffering. You can't blame piracy on everything.
I hope ID can redeem themselves with Rage and offer something new and exciting in terms of game play. But somehow, I doubt they will. I mean, the whole concept of a shooter with cars sounds almost like they ran out of ideas and are jumping the shark. I truly hope that's not the case.
The other reason for weak PC sales are that we are in the first generation of consoles that are as good or better then PC's. In the past the PC did better because it offered more processing power, higher resolution, and more detail. Now consoles finally caught up to that, and are looking more attractive when the hardware costs a fraction of the price of a gaming pc.
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"piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform"... Wow, they don't really care that console market is huge and that probably releasing on PC/PS3/X360 will double/triple/quadruple or whatever their sales... It's the big bad dog of the piracy that forced them into a corner...
When someone says *PUT WHATEVER HERE* exclusive, I always think he's an idiot :) Simply cutting your potential market in half for what? Like if I care that, say, Crysis is PC exclusive (or whatever else PC exclusive game)... Oh sorry, I've forgot that I can always go to the Internets and make fun of console folks that they can't play Crysis... That sounds like fun! It just may be the sole reason to buy the game!
Anyway, if a game is well made, if it runs on x360, it will run well on my MBP. Gears of War / Call of Duty 4 / Devil May Cry 4 run perfectly, while I can't get the same performance out of FEAR. Xbox doesn't get faster every month and neither does my Macbook so it is nice that there is something that makes the devs do a bit better optimizing...
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It's a bit like the 'UE4 will release first on consoles' story. In the end Mark Rein clarified that in their terminology, UE3 already released first on consoles, so the forum hysteria about Epic 'abandoning' the PC' was based on a complete misinterpretation.
In the end it serves news sites to be sensationalist, but I really wish there could be some actual intelligent commentary, rather than the usual knee jerk reactions, for once.
Nothing has changed until forever so STFU and make some great games across all platforms dumbasses!
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