Not anymore. The times, they are a'changing.

"GS: Now, id was a huge pioneer for PC gaming. But when you announced Rage, it was the first time you guys announced development of a game in-house for the PS3, 360, and PC.

TH: Yeah, multiplatform.

GS: So do you guys still consider yourself first and foremost a PC developer?

TH: Well, actually it's been a fundamental, sort of philosophical shift at the company, is that we really have transitioned from, first and foremost, a PC developer to a multiplatform developer. And so when John [Carmack] developed id Tech 5 (see below), it really was targeted from the initiation as a multiplatform technology solution.

Now, there's no question that our roots are in PC gaming. And when I play a first-person shooter, keyboard and mouse is the configuration that I want to play on. I'm devoting my gaming time right now on the PC to Quake Live. I like a little Rock Band on the console, to be honest about it. But we feel like, in terms of your triple-A, big-budget, big-market title, that you really have to be cross-platform to be successful, unless you're a first party.

So as an independent developer, we feel like we have to be on all the relevant platforms. So we don't really view ourselves as PC first. I think I would say that John says that probably the primary development platform for Rage is actually the 360."

And Gears 1 was also hyped and marketed.

That isn't actually true. Similar tools come from system similarities, not spec similarities. That's just a fallacy to assume similar specs save cost on their own. It's because of the Direct X system that 360 and Windows development is easier, not specs.

And that doesn't change the fact that HD development is still really high, and they can still take a while to develop, like GTA IV and RE 5 (and the latter doesn't even have the excuse of throwing out three builds before the final version).

at least he wasn't being a douche

You do understand that the PS3 doesn't use DirectX, and thus that multiplatform engines have to abstract out the library calls?

And that it's only because the consoles have grown powerful enough that you can develop in such abstractions spending much less time and money optimizing for the peculiar hardware, where with older consoles you would have had to separately optimize AI, graphics, I/O to the last bit if you wanted an acceptable performance.

id makes perfect sense, they are more PC type devs, which means they squeeze console powers in their own ways to the max possible, and for what they want to do, Wii isn't capable which is also true. It's not hard to tell if you've looked at Rage. To be frank, I don't want to see id games on Wii, I'd hate to look at it personally.

I just remembered that John Carmack said early this year that they "may" do a Wii game.

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/02/24/john-carmack-talks-possible-wii-development-iphone-doom-4-more/


but he didn't say exactly what, but definetly not one of his top games that are gfx heavy. I jsut hope if this is true, that it will be similar genre that they are good at and not some casual attempt at a game.

it definitely wouldn't be a shooter, which would be a good thing.

LOL @ the argument that has started because of this article.

id has always pretty much done their own thing, they like their technology and they stick to it, they make console games when they feel like it though it's usually terrible ports of the PC games they made.

As for some of the arguments made in this thread, I don't see how Dead Space Extraction isn't a risk especially a new IP and a nice powerful engine with a good budget.

If you build from the ground up Wii is cheaper to develop for, period.

Sure record sales have been reported on the other consoles but that's mostly because of the fact that every game now that has the large HD budgets have been marketed as the second coming of gaming... the reason why you ask? If they didn't achieve these record breaking sales they'd go out of business pretty fast, unlike past gens you can't have flops (not sales wise but profit wise) and expect your company to be ok.

All consoles pose risks, it's always been that way, you have a budget you think it can sell, it doesn't you lose money, the only thing that has changed is the initial budgets have grown to movie budget size while the industry hasn't hit the mass market quite like movies and so they must market each and every game as the second coming to keep their head above water, but the thing is, the market is fickle and will burn out much like the comic book industry if they keep doing this.

1. Duh! That's why I didn't mention it.

2. That does not save that much, nor does it mean doing what you can on the Wii would raise the cost too much to risk it (which seems to be an implication here).

But the point he makes is for any platform not just Wii. You can create an awesome game on a platform and yet that doesn't mean it will sell. Especially if it is a new IP. On PS3 and 360 you may not have to compete with Nintendo, which is quite a challenge in itself, but you still have to get over the same boundaries.

The PS360 vs Wii work as exact polar opposites on risk vs advantage but they are still present for both. By releasing a game on either you are taking a risk and hoping to take advantage of the positives.

Now maybe the kinds of games that iD is wishing to make they feel would not do well with the Wii market but once again they must go over risk analysis. If the market on PS360 is flooded with that kind of game while basically empty on the Wii then those are things they have to take into account. Case and point was Tales of Symphonia on the GC. Title virtually sold due to an empty market of RPGs.

Whatever decision they do make or any developer is there own and on each one they will lose and gain something. Just because COD4: Modern Warfare sold ungodly on PS360 doesn't mean it was a complete victory of choice. They lost out on a market by not releasing a Wii version and paid the price with World at War. With every decision there is going to be a negative to it but they aren't given everything to know this before hand so it's quite the guessing game.