Even though personal computers forever changed the video game industry back in the early nineties, they are not the leading platforms for games anymore, according to John Carmack, a legendary game designer whose Doom and Wolfenstein revolutionized the industry. Game consoles are much more popular devices used for video gaming and therefore id Softwares latest Rage title was tailored for Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3.
"We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games. That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console [Rage] versions will have larger audiences than the PC version," said John Carmack, the lead programmer at id Software, in an interview with IndustryGamers web-site.
Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on. A game built with a tenth the resources on a platform 10 times as powerful would be an inferior product in almost all cases," added Mr. Carmack.
The recently released highly-anticipated Rage video game has major issues with quality on personal computers. id Software said that the problems were conditioned by driver issues of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia ForceWare and would be resolved shortly. The main reason for the issues is that the latest title by id was designed with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles in mind, whereas the PC version is essentially a port with high-quality graphics.
"You can choose to design a game around the specs of a high-end PC and make console versions that fail to hit the design point, or design around the specs of the consoles and have a high-end PC provide incremental quality improvements. We chose the latter. A high end PC is nearly 10 times as powerful as a console, and we could unquestionably provide a better experience if we chose that as our design point and we were able to expend the same amount of resources on it.
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"We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games. That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console [Rage] versions will have larger audiences than the PC version," said John Carmack, the lead programmer at id Software, in an interview with IndustryGamers web-site.
Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on. A game built with a tenth the resources on a platform 10 times as powerful would be an inferior product in almost all cases," added Mr. Carmack.
The recently released highly-anticipated Rage video game has major issues with quality on personal computers. id Software said that the problems were conditioned by driver issues of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia ForceWare and would be resolved shortly. The main reason for the issues is that the latest title by id was designed with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles in mind, whereas the PC version is essentially a port with high-quality graphics.
"You can choose to design a game around the specs of a high-end PC and make console versions that fail to hit the design point, or design around the specs of the consoles and have a high-end PC provide incremental quality improvements. We chose the latter. A high end PC is nearly 10 times as powerful as a console, and we could unquestionably provide a better experience if we chose that as our design point and we were able to expend the same amount of resources on it.
