John Carmack talks about Rage SD and HD, iOS, and what's next for iOS gaming

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/11/19/john-carmack-talks-about-rage-sd-and-hd-ios-and-whats-next-fo/

by rimantas • 16 years ago

67 22 16 years ago

cletus2• 16 years ago

...of the available small platforms, I think that the iOS platform is clearly the best. We're keeping our eyes on the Android market; we'll be freeing up our first application internally on that pretty soon, but there's a lot of things with how the distribution platform works and the diversity of the platforms that you have to target, where things are still much, much nicer on the iOS world."

Carmack isn't a fanboy you can easily dismiss and in gaming he is a heavyweight.

This just goes to prove a point vie made several times: iOS's future is assured by virtue of gaming. This is something Android will have a much harder time with and Sony/Nintendo better watch out.

matwood• 16 years ago

It probably has something to do with what the Angry Bird developers blogged about the other day - fragmentation. They are having to make a 'lighter' version of the game for many of the Android phones. The iPhone is susceptible to a similar problem with the 3G/GS/4 out there currently, but seemed a lot easier to support than what the rovio guys have said about Android.

ergo983• 16 years ago

The low end of Android -- particularly in the GPU realm -- is much lower on low-end Android devices. An iPhone 3 decimates a Dream/Magic, for instance. There are new Android devices coming out that still don't hold a match to the original iPhone.

That isn't fragmentation. It's disturbing hearing it described as that. It's consumer choice.

Really Android needs a "gaming index", similar to the reality that some PCs -- just like some Macs -- are really shitty for gameplay, whereas others are high-end superstars, the devices in the Android market should have clear rankings. The Nexus One, for instance, has a terrible GPU. The Galaxy S is a good 3X faster or more.

alphabeat• 16 years ago

> but there's a lot of things with how the distribution platform works

I wonder if the former is about Android's lack of DRM.

pmjordan2• 16 years ago

Many paid iOS apps are pirated, even crappy ones. My impression is that Android app distribution introduces far more friction than the iOS App Store, for both consumers and developers.

zyb09• 16 years ago

I played this today on my coworker's iPhone4, since I'm running around with an Anroid of course. Gotta say, the gaming-side of the iPhone makes me quite jealous, especially with all the classics like Monkey Island and Secret of Mana being remade too! So I'm hoping my inner child doesn't win and tell me to join the iOS plague next summer, but it's tempting!

timknauf• 16 years ago

Unfortunately the iPhone port of Monkey Island has an awkward interface, where the screen functions as sort of a trackpad for a cursor. (Full disclosure: I've been working on a made-for-iPhone adventure, so I'm probably predisposed to be critical of interface shoehorning. Monkey Island on a phone is still a very good thing.)

stevenwei• 16 years ago

Does that apply to both the Special Edition mode and the Classic Mode?

Haven't tried the iPhone version, but on the iPad, the classic mode has the 'drag to move cursor', but the Special Edition mode has updated controls that work really well on the touchscreen.

yread• 16 years ago

Why does he sell it so cheap? Couldn't he easily charge 5$ or more?

alxp• 16 years ago

IIRC id's first game on iOS was Wolfenstein 3D which originally cost $9.99 when I bought it. They are probably aiming for the left-hand side of the price / demand curve for Rage to gain new fans, where Wolf3D was targetted at people who already were fans.

chandler55• 16 years ago

I remember John specifically saying at Quakecon that he wanted the game to be an app that people use to show off their iOS device.

muhfuhkuh• 16 years ago

If id can sustain the 1.99 price point and stay in the top 10 (and there seems to be price sensitivity the higher in ranking you go in the iPhone app store; not so much so in the iPad app store, oddly), there is a chance id could make between $2 to 10 million in a year, post-30% Apple's cut (assuming traditional sales breakdown goes that #1 on the app store is ~20,000 units a day and #10 is ~5,000 units a day). That's on one game, on mobile. It doesn't consider the fact that Rage on mobile was more of a marketing vehicle to give everyone a taste of Rage coming for the PC, OS X, Linux, PS3, and XBox 360. Now _that_ is where id makes it's mark.

davidppp• 16 years ago

It's a fairly short game, much shorter than their Doom Resurrection which sold for $9.99 on release. I also recall JohnC saying that the iPhone game offers a fantastic marketing channel for their bigger Rage console game, so they wanted to get it into the hands of as many people as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if id seriously considered offering the iPhone game for free.

petercooper• 16 years ago

I think it's a generational thing.

A key generation using the iOS platform as a gaming device now is young - the under 25s. I suspect id has almost no penetration or brand recognition into that demographic. For id, the void between 1999 and 2009 merely contains Doom 3 (and Quake 4, sort of), a game that was not targeted at or appreciated by young gamers at all, who were all busy on their consoles.

id seriously needs to bring the younger generation on board and get known among that group, since the older gamers will naturally drop off over time (I'm 29 and was a huge id fan in the day but already have stopped buying and playing games on most platforms). Stocking it high and selling it cheap is a great way to do this, especially as many under 25s are living on gift iTunes store credit bought by parents.

zachinglis• 16 years ago

I think you are part right. It was mentioned in a review that this is the first of many episodes in the series. I suspect that if this is true; the next ones will be higher priced.

acqq• 16 years ago

750MB download on the HD version, people are still buying it. "We're number 1 with the HD version, and the SD version is down like in the 30s or something," said Carmack. "This is going to influence our thinking going forward -- if it's that big of a difference, we probably won't offer the low-end, standard def version."

Everybody is taking the HD version even when the difference is hardly noticeable except that the memory warnings appear (iPhone 3GS)(!) I guess these customers didn't know about that aspect. I believe it was a wrong marketing decision if 3GS people didn't get the information that HD performs worse (I'd name the versions "Rage for 3GS" and "Rage HD" whereas the current names are "RAGE for iPhone, iPod..." and "RAGE HD for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4..."). Of course if people can select "nothing" or "HD" version they'll take HD (give me more!) the question is if they are going to be satisfied with the trade-offs.

John Carmack talks about Rage SD and HD, iOS, and what's next for iOS gaming

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