"It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties," Hollenshead explained. "It's like, look, this is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish--not necessarily exclusively to id or id titles, but if you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing."

Bethesda's development arm, of course, is behind the RPG series The Elder Scrolls and, more recently, Fallout 3--sprawling open-world games which could well benefit from the large and unique worlds that id Tech 5 is built to enable.

Licensed id technology has powered a huge number of third-party games over the years, ranging from Rise of the Triad and Half-Life to Call of Duty and Brink. id wizard John Carmack yesterday demonstrated id Tech 5 running at 60fps on an iPhone.