Following the surprising news that Bethesda parent company ZeniMax had acquired legendary developer id, the studio has issued a lengthy statement explaining the reasons behind the acquisition and shed some light on its plans for growth.

"We will add a third major development team," id co-founder John Carmack told VentureBeat, noting that the Doom and Rage developer "already had a plan in place."

Carmack explained that the Quake Live team, "which had less than a dozen people," will work with id's other two major teams on multiplayer for Rage and Doom 4 as an "intermediate step" to "get familiar with our technology there."

Following that, the team will be assigned one of id's "main intellectual properties," a catalog that includes Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein and Commander Keen.

"It's not clear what that [property] is," said Carmack. "That's all we wanted: three teams. It's not as if we wanted to create four, five and six teams. We have two teams doing big titles now. We have our mobile teams doing other work. But we'll add that... Read more

Doom and Quake creator id Software expects to reveal some unannounced "new stuff" at E3 this June, CEO Todd Hollenshead revealed in an interview with GameSpot.

"I'll leave that as a tease," said Hollenshead when pressed for more details. Currently, the studio has three announced major projects: Wolfenstein, co-developed with Raven and due out this summer, Rage, which definitely won't arrive this year, and Doom 4. Additionally, id is continuing work on the free-to-play Quake Live, currently in open beta.

Doom 4 is "not a sequel to Doom 3, but it's not a reboot either," the CEO teased further, entirely ignoring the bit where GameSpot asked if it was a prequel. "It's a little bit different than those, and if I told you why, I would get my ass kicked."

However, that doesn't mean Doom 4, already said to be "significantly different," will abandon its roots. "Everything I've seen on it is classic Doom, so I don't really have worries that people aren't going to like it and start talking about it... Read more

Fantasy author Graham Joyce has revealed his involvement with id's upcoming Doom 4.

"I'll also be working on the computer game Doom 4 for ID Software," reads the latest update to Joyce's site, apparently posted January 6, 2009. "I've been playing Doom for some years."

The writer of such novels as "How to Make Friends with Demons" and "The Tooth Fairy: A Novel" then confirmed the news with CVG, merely noting that "that ID have hired me to help develop the storyline potential" while offering no additional details.

Described by id as "significantly different" than Doom 3, Doom 4 will utilize the id Tech 5 engine that's powering Rage. However, the studio has promised that Doom 4 will appear to be running on "a totally new game engine" when it is eventually released.

Steadily 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... Read more

Midway through the second hour, even most of the die-hard nerds started to leave.

On stage was a man who, by all accounts, did not need to be there. Wealthy, successful, busy programming rockets and enjoying family life--id Software president John Carmack has plenty of excuses to be a recluse, not the least of which is his admitted lack of "people skills."

But there he was regardless, lecturing away on a Thursday night, professor to his students. Seemingly undeterred by his thinning class, he moved from topic to topic in Picard-like fashion, holding the microphone as the rock king of computer programming.

Though the overall scent noticeably improved with each departure, the buzz within the ballroom also noticeably quieted. Near the end you could almost hear the soft death rattles of fizzling laptop batteries, exhausted journalists resorting to pen and paper, or just plain giving up. Still he rolled on. And on.

Through hour one. Hour two. Hour three.

And then he took questions.... Read more

id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead expressed interest in producing another feature film adaptation of the developer's Doom shooter series, the developer told Kotaku.

"Personally I'd like to do another Doom movie, I thought working with it was a blast," Hollenshead said. "There are some lessons we learned. The best way to do things better is to get the experience."

Doom was first brought to the big screen by director Andrzej Bartkowiak and Universal Pictures in 2005. The film, which starred Karl Urban and wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, was released to mostly negative reviews and fan backlash following significant changes to the core mythology of the hell-spawn shooter series.

"We'll see what happens when we get further along in development of [Doom 4] and there's more buzz and we share more about what the game will be about," Hollenshead added,

The CEO further noted that the decision would fall to Doom distributor Universal, which owns the rights to the movie and any possible sequels. "As the buzz meter starts to go up that may kind of kick start the guys over at Universal."

During an interview with Shacknews, id Software president John Carmack described Doom 4 as being "significantly different" than Doom 3.

When asked whether the game will be rooted in the horror genre, Carmack indicated that it will instead focus more on pure action elements a la Doom 2.

"One of the things that I come to in my limited contributions to the whole Doom 4 design process is, it has to still be you beating down the bad guys," said Carmack.

"It has to be a triumph of heavy weaponry over demonic forces in some way, and you have to be blowing demons all to hell all around you, and it's a more positive side of things there."

Carmack explained that he found some of the complaints of Doom 3's brand of horror to be "completely valid," saying that the "contrived nature of monsters hiding in a closet" and the extreme darkness were two things that caused the company to cancel its game Darkness and begin production of Rage.

Needless to say, there will be no scary little girls in the Doom 4.

"It's not that you're running around frightened down to your last bullet [in Doom 4]," added Carmack. "There will occasionally be that, but it should be much... Read more

Update: In an interview with Shacknews, id's John Carmack reiterated that the Xbox 360 version of Rage will look worse than the PlayStation 3 version.

Carmack said that the uncompressed build of Rage encompasses a terrabyte of data, and that id will need to use a "different type of compression" to fit the game on two dual-layer Xbox 360 DVDs.

When asked whether the difference will be significant, Carmack noted that "hero shots" should look similar, but that Xbox 360 players might find a rock that is more blurry when exploring the periphery of Rage's world.

Original story: id's post-apocalyptic open-world shooter Rage (PC, PS3, 360, Mac) will look worse on Xbox 360 due to the compression needed to fit the game's assets on two DVDs, programmer John Carmack revealed at tonight's QuakeCon keynote.

According to Carmack, the royalty fees to include a third disc in the Xbox 360 version would be so high that it simply isn't a feasible solution, with the programmer hoping for Microsoft to make a concession. He stressed that the issue is merely a storage problem and has nothing to do with the power of the Xbox 360 hardware, while adding that the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray format is Sony's one leg up on the competition.

Carmack also noted his belief that neither Doom 4 or Rage will be digitally distributed online, as id isn't looking into that sort of distribution for its major titles at this point.

During last year's QuakeCon talk, Carmack stated that the PlayStation 3 edition of Rage would ship on a single Blu-ray disc, with the PC and Mac versions likely to arrive in both Blu-ray and DVD form.

While id has remained rather tight-lipped about Doom 4, designer Tim Willits has suggested that the shooter sequel won't be known as Doom 4 when it eventually hits.

Though still clearly labeled Doom, the game will sport a subtitle instead of a numeral, Willits informed Big Download.

However, id CEO Todd Hollenshead claims that a final judgment has yet to be made in the numeral versus subtitle debate. "We haven't made the decision about that yet," he told Kotaku. "There is probably a let's not make a numeral game and some say we should make it one."

Willits further noted that Doom 4 will not be a direct sequel to Doom 3... Read more

While Doom 4 details have been light at QuakeCon 2008, id's John Carmack did announce that the FPS sequel's multiplayer mode will be more significant than the online modes found in Doom 3.

Saying the Doom 4 multiplayer experience will have a "much larger presence" than that found in the previous Doom title, the id president said that his company should have enough resources to create a satisfying online component to match the single player campaign.

"[Doom 4 multiplayer] will not be as good of a multiplayer as Quake Live is, but it should still be good, and we will intend it to be better than Doom 3 or Quake 4 multiplayer," said Carmack.

Though powered by the same id Tech 5 technology as id's open-world shooter Rage, Doom 4 will be so detailed that it appears to run on "a totally new game engine," according to id co-founder and software engineer John Carmack.

The jump in graphical fidelity comes about as Doom 4 is targeted to run at 30 frames per second, whereas Rage will run at 60 frames per second. Carmack claims this allows id to throw "three times as much horsepower" at Doom 4.

Above, id's Rage

"[Doom 4 is] going to be a 30Hz game," he told Maximum PC. "It's going to look like a totally new game engine on there, even though it's going to be built on the four years of effort that we spent developing this generation of technology."

No platform or release details have been revealed for Doom 4, which was unveiled in a surprise announcement earlier this year. However, the id Tech 5-powered Rage will arrive on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Mac, suggesting similar platforms for... Read more

id Software today announced that it has begun production on Doom 4, and is now in the process of expanding its internal team of developers to work on the shooter sequel.

"Doom is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next installment of our flagship franchise to Earth," said id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead in a release.

"It's critical for id Software to have the best creative minds in-house to develop games that meet the standards synonymous with our titles."

The company is currently accepting applications to fill job openings covering roles such as producer, lead designer, and lead animator, among others.

The job listings page indicates that applicable platforms for the positions are PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Though no further details on the game were released, the studio will likely make use of its new id Tech 5 engine for the project.

id Software lead artist Kevin Cloud recently told Shacknews that one of... Read more