id Software co-founder criticizes Apple stance on iPhone games - Page 2

From everything I've read the XBOX 360 has been a money pit for MS. It has cost them billions and despite the head start of a year the Wii--which is being sold for profit--is easily outselling the 360.

Not strictly true. Samsung had an 8GB phone out 18 months ago, using a microdrive! and Nokia's first 8GB phones came out before the iPhone did here but not in the USA. Call that one a draw especially as Nokia's 8GB phones dropped the SD card slots.

But calling them an industry leader when they're behind in so many other aspects and it was pretty logical if they're slamming an iPod in there too just seems farcical. The other guys needed the large storage for actually doing stuff with their phones like allowing more software, taking large mega pixel photos and video. That it took them so long to get there is quite depressing but Apple will have to increase their storage too when the iPhone can actually do the same.

Doing a really good job of storing, playing back and presenting music, photos and video isn't "actually doing stuff"?

So that the other guys "needed" the large storage for actually doing stuff, but Apple just "slammed an iPod in there" so having high end storage isn't good enough? Because music playback isn't doing stuff? Or is doing too much stuff? What?

You are going to have to unroll the chain of deduction a bit here because I have absolutely no idea how paragraph #1 is supposed to follow from paragraph #2.

As well, paragraph #2:s list sounds more like a personal preference of some kind than a genuine "biggest titles of the holiday season". C&C3 was out in middle of spring and made little waves even then. Perseus Mandate is the second expansion pack to a FPS from 2005. Et cetera.
This ranks a solid "WTF".

Companies enter new markets when they smell profits. How they perceive their existing business faring in the future has little to do with it.

And as to why a company that announced setting up a mobile division a week ago is not yet big in the mobile market? It's a mystery if I ever saw one.
$2000 for $700 worth of gaming performance with no possibility of upgrade? Covered, eh.

apple doesn't take gaming seriously and never has. Until they have a system for the home user with upgradable, off the shelf video cards, gaming on the mac is a pipe dream. It's sad really. There is a whole other market there for them to tap into.

Sales for the 360 have been quite good. And they have been selling them at a profit for awhile now. The Wii so far is just a gimick in my opinion. I own one and wish I had purchased a 360. But neither have anything to do with the topic.

If you look at from a user who likes to play games every now and then but prefers to use OS X as their man OS then you could say that one is saving $700 since all Macs run WInXP natively.

Are the sales better than the Wii?
Are you stating that they are in the black now?

I don't think that the 360 is selling as many units as the Wii anymore. But it's also been out far longer and everyone who wants one pretty much has one. And the Wii is still selling very strong and won't have any trouble with total number of consoles sold over the 360. But the 360 has sold well and continues to sell well. That's all i'm saying.

Last numbers I saw puts each 360 sold in the black for more than a year now. Meaning that they are selling each one for more than it costs to make them.

And most people I know with a Wii, which is well, most people I know, are all bored with it. It's great at first but most games are gimicky and don't work well with the remote. I have free rentals at blockbuster for the year and have been renting a ton of games. I have yet to play one worth buying. I wish it had better graphics and HD support but it is what it is. And online play will improve over time. I'm personally looking forward to mario kart and super smash bros.

ID software used to scale - that is - you could play it on any hardware at reduced specs and it would be playable. I remember playing Quake III Arena on my imac 333 for crying out loud. The most popular Mac selling today is the MacBook. Think Rage will play on that?

Hell no!

It'll be some barn burner that will require a Dual Xenon tower with a maxed out video card. Guess what? For my work I don't need that and I can't justify spending that much on a system for games when a PS3 will do just as nicely for a fraction of the price.

Wake me up if his engine can scale for old or less than Cray tech.

No current engines run well on the Macbook because it has dog-slow graphics hardware, yet you complain about an unreleased engine.

Quake 3 - 1999
iMac - 1998
Rage Pro graphics - high end in 1997
Macbook GMA graphics - I don't even know what year's high end the X3100 would correspond to, but I'm guessing around 2002
Rage - 2008
On the contrary, a $200 graphics card will do more than the PS3 will at $400.

In a way, yes it is but you're not actually doing much with the storage space since you need a Mac/PC to get data on there. The other phone makers have approached it from the angle that you actually create content on their phones which other than photos, you don't with an iPhone. That's what I meant by using the storage to actually do stuff. If I just wanted an 8GB iPod, an iPod does it better for less IMHO.

I'm sure they'll get there though. Or hope they let other people fill the gaps at least. Carmac seems to think not from his perspective but I'm not sure why anyone would want to play Doom style games on a phone with no joypad controller. I've had Doom on my phone (SE P910i) which has a stylus based screen and a keypad - it's unplayable IMHO.

However, if someone gets a ScummVM port running on the iPhone like I've got on my p910i, then we're talking. Lucas Arts style adventures are perfect games for phones IME.

As long as you already have the $2000 workstation of course.

Even then, you can't be sure of a better gaming experience. First if you do get a Mac, you have to install Windows. Then install the game, which at about 4GB+ each these days takes about 15-20 minutes before you get started. You might even have to reboot as some PC games have copy protection (with things like Orange Box, you'll even have to suffer using Steam again). Then you'll have to face up to the fact that there aren't close to the same selection of good games on the PC as on a console. Then you can easily get DirectX errors or performance variation during play if you don't get the multitude of settings right.

The plus side to PC gaming is the games tend to be much cheaper. If the PC version sells for £29 and it's so easy to develop for the XBox360, why does the 360 game cost about £49? I guess they are maybe factoring in the cost of losing money from the console but it's still a pretty high premium per game so that has to be weighed up in the comparison. But despite the lower cost of PC gaming and being able to use a keyboard and mouse, I find console gaming overall to be far more enjoyable.

How's the Wii related to anything we're discussing here?
Like there was anything of quality to refute in your argument.

You whine about a yet unreleased iD game not running on the Macbook, say it's iD's fault, and present Quake 3 on iMac as a case of "when iD was still doing it right", when in fact iD has not changed what they do. Apple equipped its mainline computers with decent graphics technology back then. Now they opt for five year old tech.

edit: if you mean the whole game industry, then I somewhat agree. There should be more games with low hardware requirements, and true crossplatform games, in those genres and styles of game where it is doable easily. iD, however, has always specialized in another direction entirely. I don't ask for steak at a bakery any more than I ask a low-requirement RTS engine (for instance) from iD.
A lot of people do already own a computer for some other purpose. Even building one from scratch to match a current console in power doesn't cost more than about $700.

Like the gameboy? The PSP? The Wii?

Or Maybe they spend more on things like the XBox 360 and Playstation 2 & 3.

When Steve "personally" doesn't like something, then he implements in a half assed fashion.

Doesn't like TV? See Apple TV.
Doesn't like games? See iPhone games and Mac gaming market.

Specific games are just as large as hollywood blockbusters and are ways to move hardware. Just ask Microsoft with the sales of Halo 2 and Halo 3.

Those have HUGE numbers. Steve is being stupid to ignore them.

What is wrong with the AppleTV? When it came out most media extenders didn't have a HDD for storage, HDMI output or 802.11n. As an owner of 3 different media extenders prior to the AppleTV I can say that the interface and reliability of those devices were absolute crap.

If you are referring to iTunes Store video content, that has nothing to do with quality of content that can be played on the AppleTV. That is a separate issue. Also, the AppleTV's sales are on par with TiVO sales this year. When Apple gets video rental straightened out and ups the video quality then that "hobby" will become their 4th leg.

Wow, and I thought *I* was being brash. This debate is heating up!

WARNING: RAMBLING HERE

For the record, the only thing I can think of that is relevant right now is, what is the monthly cost of your gaming experience?

Be it mobile, handheld, console, web, PC, Mac, Windows-on-Mac.

Let's factor in what is the monthly cost of your gaming experience involving iD software? I don't play QuakeWars, don't like the Quake4/Doom3 engine, so for me, iD and Carmack is irrelevant now.

Fair enough I played Quake4 one or two years ago. Was okay, but not great.

According to Wikipedia Carmack's signature mobile game was 2005's "Doom RPG".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_RPG

Indeed the PC games I mentioned I like are personal preference. Nonetheless it is highly likely for racing games on PC, Windows-On-Mac, [hopefully soon] Mac(Cider), NeedForSpeed: ProStreet is definitely a big, big, big title.

Given my PC specs below (in my signature) I can play ProStreet on MAX settings at 1024x768, the icing on the cake is I can run 8x AntiAliasing. Visuals are crisp yet smooth, gently glowing, yet with hard shiny damage effects, nice smoke and crashes and high-speed racing, etc.

What is the reasonable equivalent of Xbox360, PS3 resolution? About 1280x720 progressive, for the most part. 1080i fudging not counted.

Take an iMac 24", MacBookPro, 1280x720 resolution, and you can play smooth and nice most PC games for the next THREE YEARS. Of course, each year with new games released that year you reduce your game detail settings.

As Solipism says. How much do you save *each* year by using a MacBookPro or iMac24"? By not having to build, setup, maintain and run a separate gaming PC or console? An interesting point for reflection.

Mac, Windows-On Mac gaming with MacBookPro. 1280x720 resolution 2x to 8x AntiAliasing:
2008: Runs all the latest games at 85% of MAX detail settings
2009: Runs all the latest games at 65% of MAX detail settings
2010: Runs all the latest games at 35% of MAX detail settings

If you think of a 2010 game at 35% of that-then-MAX detail settings,
combined with a lot of dual-core gaming CPU optimisations,
Even a 2008 MacBookPro at 2010 wouldn't be too bad.

Compress your Mac purchase cycle to 2 years, say 2008,2009,
new one start of 2010, and the MacBookPro as an all-round
Windows, Mac, Gaming machine, is really not that bad.
Monthly expense for 15" 2.6ghz over 24months (excluding software costs)
is US$166 per month. (15" 2.6ghz, 4GB RAM, 256mb nVidia 8600MGT,
AppleCare)

I have a few PS3 games that is the full 1080p, razor sharp too.

Fair enough. I'm just pissed that Sony is advertising their TVs as "Full 1080 HD" when this generic term/logo covers both 1080p and 1080i.

Curious, which games are these? I'll keep a lookout for them where PS3 is demo'ed.

Fixed that for you.

Here the 8600GT does 1024x768, no AA, medium detail, and reaches a 30fps average. Now, it depends on the individual what they perceive as smooth and controllable gameplay, but the most commonly held standards for single player FPS gameplay I have observed gamers and gaming journalists use are "30 average fps", "30 minimum fps" (with dips allowed in situations that do not require any twitch input from the gamer) and "60 average fps". As a general rule, multiplayer players tend to aim higher. So the 30fps average is okay for a lot of people, but at the same time a lot of people do not consider it solid and would prefer to drop the graphic quality and/or resolution even further.

Maybe he meant $300 (the 8800 GT at the moment, since demand is so hot), but the PS3 only uses the equiv. to a 7600 or 7800 in SLI - beefy, but the 8800 is better, plus HD video decoding and DX10 (which has no benefit at this point, but it took a couple years for XP to get going, and I don't see Vista being any different, but that's a whole other topic).

As for me, I am at a complete crux in my computing needs, I sorta kind need to upgrade my PC, and could build a pretty sweet rig for ~$700 (C2D, ATI HD3850 or Nvidia 8600, 4 GB of RAM, a nice mobo, a new PSU, other parts I would cannibalize from my current AMD machine), or buy a Mac Mini, which is pathetic in nearly every area, but it does have a C2D and run OSX. The iMac doesn't fit my needs, the Mac Pro is way out of my budget, and I already have a newer laptop.

Computers are a cheap commodity anymore - desktop DDR2 ram is dirt cheap (doesn't matter for Apple, as they only use laptop/server ram), hard drives are cheap, but again, unless you have Mac Pro or love external drives, and graphics cards and CPU's are dropping in price, and adding tons of features, but again, the boat sailed on, Apple was late at the pier, I don't care about using Xeons in a desktop.

For the price of the Mac Pro, it should have top-of-the-line everything, but it doesn't.

And I do think gaming can be easier to do on a console, but games do push PC technology along, and cause lower prices on components.

The Mac mini is for someone who wants a small footprint machine for basic computing. It's a great alternative for many who don't want to buy a new PC and wish to give OS X a go, but it doesn't sound like a good alternative for you. If you want to build your own machine, $700 is your limit and you wish to use OS X then I suggest Hackintosh. Disclaimer: Providing you buy an authentic copy of OS X first.

Somebody argued that "nobody pays X dollars to play games."

Well, nobody buying a game-enabled iPhone would be paying that just to play games. They would be paying that for everythng the iPhone offers which would hopefully include games.

There are going to be tons of iPhone clones in the coming years. The average, non-apple fanboy, consumer is going to look at the phones available. See two phones that do pictures, movies, maps, video, etc. Oh, but this one here also does games and the iPhone doesn't. That will be the dealbreaker for a lot of people.

Sure, you can rant about the superior user experience with the iPhone, but this doesn't work with most people. It's price and features. That's why people still buy MP3 players that aren't iPods. I know. I ask people who aren't using iPods and they say things like "this one was cheaper and has a radio tuner." I explain that the iPod has a better interface and they say "I can find the songs on this one just fine."

People who don't know the Apple experience cannot be swayed by words promoting the superior user interface. People can't imagine it being that much better. The average consumer is sold on bullet points and dollar signs. Apple's been missing this bullet-point for a long time and it's rather foolish.

Remember when Steve Jobs was promoting DVD stuff while the entire PC industry was doing the MP3 player and CD-burner thing? Then Jobs finally caught the tail end of that train and they put out iTunes and started making CD burners fairly standard on Macs? Now Apple is pretty prestigious in the music industry.

This is like that except Apple's still missing the train and it might be too late to catch up and come out on top but they still better get on that train before it leaves the station.

The gaming industry going to outgrow the movie industry and I hope Apple is going to be there.

It seems pretty bizarre to complain that the iPods aren't opened for game support. That's not what they were designed to do, they are built to play audio and video and the few extras are just extras. And don't forget that opening them to third party apps would mean maintaining compatibility between the different generations, which would mean limitations on changes in the hardware and OS.

Obviously the touch and iPhone change the situation. But how much gaming can a platform like that handle anyway? And how much would you gain by native programming as opposed to java and things like that?

Seriously, he's complaining that iPhone development needs to be done on an emulator? For that kind of platform doesn't that make the most sense?

Wake me up if Carmack ever does anything besides rehash the same old tired First Person Shooter crap!

Apple is only as stuck maintaining compatibility as they want to be. At one extreme they can just do their own thing and let the 3rd parties worry about keeping their apps compatible. That's what happens with WoW add-ons, for instance, and there are a ton of those.
Typically, a lot. It certainly doesn't hurt the developers to have a choice.
Most of the time emulator is the preferred way to develop. Not having access to the hardware in the instances where you need it to debug and profile the code is a problem. Emulators are not perfect. The more you push the hardware and the closer to it you work, the more you need access to the real thing.

If a new generation of iPods breaks compatibility with third party apps, people would go nuts over it. Just look what happened with the new batch and the few iPod games. I can't blame apple for wanting to avoid that, is it worth the minor benefit of a few iPod apps over the bad press every time they update? Or the pain of having to worry about app compatibility?

How much can the iPhone or touch really do gamewise anyway? Do they have the cpu power to run a complex game (the kind that would really need to be optimized) or would they be limited to fairly simple stuff anyway? I get the impression that there's not that much going on in the hardware that a game dev would really be able to push that much anyway.

The Nintendo DS is the fastest selling video game system in history, selling over 50 million units in about three years and continuing to sell strong.

The Nintendo DS has two processors:
A 67 Mhz ARM
A 33 Mhz ARM

The iPhone has a 620 Mhz ARM.

The processors are possibly from different families and have different capabilities, but regardless of architectural changes, the iPhone's processor is still significantly faster.


John Carmack recently wrote a 3D engine for the Nintendo DS. It only took him four days. He says everything well-documented, he had direct access to the hardware, and the development tools were very good.

The iPhone has enough power, but it sounds like developers do not have enough to work with if they want to maximize the iPhone's capabilities. It's a valid complaint.

Using Crysis as an example is a bit tangential for various reasons. Firstly because this is billed primarily as a DirectX10 game. Secondly, if you look at most of the titles I mentioned, and most PC gaming from shooters (Fear, HL2, Battlefield), racing (NeedForSpeedEtc, Sega Rally), and RTS (C&C3, DawnOfWar, etc.) and even multiplayer online, as I mentioned, you will find 1280x720 4xAA, AF, you can play most of these at very high detail settings on latest MacBookPro.

And I am talking about smooth play. On my setup at 1024x768, 4xAA, games above I mentioned, I get smooth for racing, shooting, RTS. I don't do the frame rate fudgery. It's about good smoothness of graphics, responsive gameplay, etc.

The NeedForSpeed: ProStreet, Sega Rally, HL2[Source], FEARXP/XP2, DawnOfWar, C&C3 engines are generally efficient, well-coded, and beautiful.

I really am not too impressed with Crysis. Requiring Vista [OMFG], DirectX10, and probably an 8800GTS minimum is a deal killer for me. There is a niche for games like these.

But other developers and publishers are smart. NeedForSpeed: ProStreet for example, runs on a good variety of hardware "down" to even, I would contend, a 6600GT, given 1GB RAM, Core2Duo 2.0ghz.

I would strongly advise people at this stage to only consider Crysis if they are willing to really pony up the hard cash to get the latest latest gaming hardware and are willing to waste a lot more resources (time money etc.) on Vista.

Crysis is perhaps the perfect example of the wrong direction games can take. Requiring Vista, DirectX10, obscenely high hardware requirements. Games like these potentially can cause me to give up on PC gaming altogether and just get a PSP, Wii or PSP2.

I don't care much about the iPhone or any cell phone for that matter; however, I would like to see as many games as possible available for Macintosh. At least the new Intellimacs! I just got a nice Core 2 Duo iMac and would love to play some games on it, even though I have a PC with just as much power right next to it.

The Macintosh platform needs to quickly be compatible with as much as it can or it will loose to PC.

Apple computers make way more sense for the average computer user, esp. those who are scared to use computers or are not intrested in learning new things, but do want a computer.

Windows has never been user friendly, that's why everyone makes friends with at least one computer geek, so they can have free PC Tech Support. With Apple products, you rarely need it for daily use.

Cheers.

Freud