id Teases Doom 4 Details and E3 Announcements; Views Itself as Multiplatform, Not PC First, Studio

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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," Hollenshead stated.

id's CEO also took a few moments to address the company's "sort of philosophical shift" towards multiplatform development, a move he previously blamed on piracy.

"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," he noted. "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."

"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."

Part of that shift was because of piracy, Hollenhead explained, but that's not the only problem. Another issue, he said, is that "retailers are more focused on consoles than they are on the PC platform, primarily, I think, because Microsoft is campaigning for the 360, probably to some extent to the expense of Windows-based games."

That said, there's at least one platform id isn't developing for.

"If you look at the numbers, independent Wii-centric development is not really justified yet," said Hollenshead. "Even if we make an awesome game, there's still a question as to whether we're going to justify our investment."

"Despite the success of the Wii, and the fact that it's the largest-selling console out there, games like we make are still doing bigger numbers than they've ever done before," he concluded. "So that doesn't give us a lot of cause to be worried about the Wii. We celebrate it, we love the Wii, but it's not for the type of games we make."

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
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    April 13, 2009 1:38 PM

    Backroom programmers to corporate twats. Woo.

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      April 13, 2009 1:46 PM

      can't blame them. you'd have to be pretty stubborn to not release your game on a console, too and instantly sell 1M+ copies more.

      the only question is, what they are developing for primary. most change to the console as the primary platform, devs like valve stick with the pc and port to the consoles. I guess this will be the same with id, but who knows...

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        April 13, 2009 2:27 PM

        I think that the idea of 'ports' is somewhat out-dated.

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          April 13, 2009 2:35 PM

          GTA4 is out-dated already?

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            April 13, 2009 2:55 PM

            After the abortion of a PC launch it had, it might as well be in the eyes of a large component of gamers.

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        April 13, 2009 2:33 PM

        Rage's primary platform is the 360, but they said the 360 version would be the worst one.

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          April 13, 2009 2:38 PM

          They didn't say it would be the worst nope.
          It all depends on how many discs they ship it with.

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            April 13, 2009 2:41 PM

            http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53976
            "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. "

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              April 13, 2009 2:53 PM

              They key thing is in the headline (which is now wrong probably).

              < Rage Will Look Worse on 360 Due to Compression >

              Obviously a Blu-Ray version will be able to carry more data. So again, it entirely depends on how many discs (DVDs) they ship the 360 version with. And that hasn't been fully confirmed yet.

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                April 13, 2009 3:11 PM

                I really can't picture them shipping a game on more than 4 DVDs.

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                April 13, 2009 9:04 PM

                They said they're going for two. In fact, they reshaped the world so it would work better on two discs rather than having five separate overworlds.

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              April 13, 2009 5:31 PM

              The Playstation 3 version of Rage will undoubtedly have higher-res source textures. Whether or not the game will look noticeably worse on the 360, though, is still unclear. John Carmack is many great things, but he's not exactly a master of visual aesthetics. you don't need detail when everything is brown anyway

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                April 14, 2009 12:33 AM

                Just like CoD4, it will probably look 1% worse and play 10% better.

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              April 13, 2009 6:44 PM

              And it'll still look nicer and run better on a pc.

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              April 13, 2009 9:07 PM

              I remember one id guy said there were drawbacks to both. While the 360 version might have more compression, the PS3 version would occasionally have to downgrade the quality because of Blu-Ray's slower load time.

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          April 14, 2009 1:54 AM

          I didn't talk about graphics though, who cares for that anyway these days.

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      April 13, 2009 3:10 PM

      It's a good thing we have internet message board members to put them in their place.

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      April 13, 2009 4:30 PM

      Kids to adults. Teenagers to parents. Poor people to rich IP owners.

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      April 13, 2009 7:52 PM

      Doing anything less in the current gaming scene would be stupid on their part. What do people expect?

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