Carmack states he made a mistake and should have focused on PCs first.

samduhman

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"“When we started on the game six years ago, I looked at the consoles and said ‘These are as good as the PC’, and our development strategy was to develop live on all the platforms. And now we’re looking at PCs that have ten times the horsepower of the consoles. I’m making a large change in my direction just saying ‘We should be building things efficiently on the PC and then deploying on the consoles.’ And we didn’t make that as crisp of a distinction as we could have."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/306236/news/id-softwares-john-carmack-20-minute-video-interview/
 
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I could have told him that...

I think the reason he is saying this now is The Witcher 2 and BF3
 
3 Things:

I like how open JC is with his philosopy and direction that he and id are doing.

I wish we can clone him and then get that clone to usurp Bobby Kotic.

Man that guys a nerd.
 
Mock him all you want, it's refreshing to hear them come to this conclusion.
 
Yeah, I bet he's saying that after witnessing what DICE are doing
 
Translation: If you work on a console game for 6 years, it looks like shit by the time it hits the market.
 
I'm glad he not only learned from his mistake, but actually admitted it.
 
His discussion about artist vs programers is spot on. I've always said artist make the game look great. While super engines don't and they should focus on optimizing. And how gameplay > gfx. Amazing Interview..
 
Yeah, I bet he's saying that after witnessing what DICE are doing

That is my view as well as competition will humble even the most arrogant man(unless you are Jen Hsun Huang :p ). :)

I have to admit that JC is one of my favorite developers as I practically grew up on his stuff. I havn't enjoyed the direction that he has been taking ID lately and I worry about RAGE as I WAS looking foward to it until I saw the trailers. I just hope Doom 4 will be back to his PC roots.
 
Only half way through and this is an amazing interview. He mentioned future changes in programming focus from graphics quality to streamlining of the art/development process, noteworthy coming from him. He mentioned his goal of 60FPS and sticking with that (vs. dropping to 30) despite tough design choices because it's something that "people that care about gaming, you can tell, the responsiveness, smoothness." Thanks to JC for caring about those that care about games.
 
Good. There is hope left in the universe. ;)

I still think Rage is going to be a pretty damned good game.
 
What's with all the negs. Carmack didn't change philosophy because of competition. He could write code that would saddened any company if he saw fit. His latest creation was never supposed to be a graphics powerhouse. He clearly states how PCs and consoles were near equal in power, but now PCs are greater in "order of magnitude". Any person with sense would re-evaluate their priorities. Regardless, I admire him more than ever for being real with people. He is a living legend and people should respect that.
 
Those of you who haven't had a chance to watch the interview, I strongly suggest you do so. I've always admired Carmack, but my admiration for him grows every time I get to see the guy talking about what he does. There's definitely something about the guy's body language and the way he speaks that projects his total infatuation with his craft, and that's not something you see too often from people in this industry.
 
Everyone makes mistakes. It takes a great man to realize they've made one and learn from it, and an even greater one to publicly admit it.

Lets not forget Carmack practically single handedly invented modern 3d game engines and the whole fps genre. Just think about how many different games use 3d (every single one) - none of those would be around without Carmack.
 
Oh Carmack you silly goose. I thought you were going to pull a CliffyB on us. Glad to have you back!
 
Ya, great interview. I agree with everything he said. He definitely still wants to push his games graphically, but acknowledges that doing so has its limitations these days. I also love his focus on input lag as that's really one of my least favorite things about games these days, and its one of the major contributors to that console feel.

DICE are pushing the limits graphically right now and I'm really excited about that, but now I'm also excited to see JC push some limits in other departments, and maybe throw a few graphical advancements our way in the future.
 
I think a lot of people could have told him this was going to happen several years ago, but it's good that he's admitted he's made a mistake.
 
What? PC? Portable Computing? I thought he liked making stuff for mobile phones best. :p
 
he didn't make that much of a mistake

majority of titles are tied to console hardware nowadays and the trend will continue through next gen consoles
 
First, what is interesting is that a lot of people on this forum assume that "consolities" is the result of greed, but if I understand Carmack correctly, it has more to do with development costs. If it is true that going full out on the PC platform means going out of business, then that changes the way I think about the problem.

Second, I was JUST thinking today, before I saw this, that when the XBOX360 launched it really was not that far behind the PCs of the day at all. In fact, Oblivion gave my PC a run for its money. So for real advancement we need new consoles that are as good as the PC's of the day today or just a little bit behind. GTX560ti - 580 anyone?

Finally, I get a sense of joy and optimism from this interview that I have not had from industry press in some time. This guy just exudes enthusiasm for building better games, and I think if Battlefield 3 was the first foot going forward, this interview might be some indication that the second foot might follow it soon.

I always believed that at a certain point the performance differences between PC and console would become so great again that the developers would have to take notice. I think they might be reconsidering at this point.
 
I agree with his point about how that development from the technology side should focus primarily on facilitating art, content creation, and game play. If they truly followed this philosophy and implement it well, I expect Rage to be a good game, not necessarily a good "benchmark."

First, what is interesting is that a lot of people on this forum assume that "consolities" is the result of greed, but if I understand Carmack correctly, it has more to do with development costs. If it is true that going full out on the PC platform means going out of business, then that changes the way I think about the problem.

What he is saying is something I feel too a lot of people don't realize. Yes you could from the technical side design for the PC, but you will not realistically have the budget to pair it with content.

The multiplatform releases today, and to some extent the growing mainstream popularity of gaming, facilitate much larger development budgets, with the trade off being technical limitations and design limitations (that usually alienate more niche "hardcore" audiences).

Finally, I get a sense of joy and optimism from this interview that I have not had from industry press in some time. This guy just exudes enthusiasm for building better games, and I think if Battlefield 3 was the first foot going forward, this interview might be some indication that the second foot might follow it soon.

It is a relatively more "casual" interview with someone who actually works intimately on games and with enough clout to not have to worry about what he says. Basically he is someone who cares about his work, can say what he wants, and actually make his views reality.
 
now that he appeared to pull his head out of his rear end, how many more years will it be before he starts making good games again......

btw Mr Carmack when the 360 was released the current ATi cards x1800 series were already more powerful than what was in the 360 by a fair amt..............so consoles were never really on par with PCs to begin with......
 
BF3 is making devs take notice I think. That game looks DAMN good. It should also run fine at high settings with a single 480/580 and a 2500K too.

I love it when people can admit their mistakes. Shows good character.
 
By the time Doom 4 is out, the new consoles will be out too and we'll be in the same position as we were when Carmack decided to focus on consoles.
 
I might be late in this, isnt rage coming out soon? flame me if you like. ive played a bunch of his games.thought they were great. but cant help but think this is a way to reel in the pc gaming community. kinda like "im sorry i choose the consoles over you, i hope we can still be friends. Please buy my game :)"
 
now that he appeared to pull his head out of his rear end, how many more years will it be before he starts making good games again......

btw Mr Carmack when the 360 was released the current ATi cards x1800 series were already more powerful than what was in the 360 by a fair amt..............so consoles were never really on par with PCs to begin with......

You haven't read the post above nor watch the video did ya?
 
Honestly I could listen to Carmack talk for hours, he's such a smart guy and is always interesting to listen to, kind of like Gabe from Valve.

I think id has to some degree "lost their way" with the PC market and he seems to have acknowledged that and maybe we'll see some improvement their next titles after rage. It's really pleasing to hear an acknowledgement that PC's are an order of magnitude faster and they're making good use of that in their own development process.

I have little doubt that a lot of the process for building the art in game can be modified so they produce higher quality source materials and (to use Carmacks words) "deploy" that onto the consoles, presumably by taking some kind of appropriately reduced quality snapshot.

I'm interested to hear him talk about a possible mega-geometry in the future, I wonder if he's working with tessellation right now.
 
First, what is interesting is that a lot of people on this forum assume that "consolities" is the result of greed, but if I understand Carmack correctly, it has more to do with development costs. If it is true that going full out on the PC platform means going out of business, then that changes the way I think about the problem.

I disagree, a large number of features that get consolized are easily avoidable or cheap to fix, not all of them are, sure, but a great many are such as FOV, mouse acceleration, resolution and aspect ratio support, console HUD elements, crap menus, lack of some graphics options like AA/AF/Vsync etc.

I always believed that at a certain point the performance differences between PC and console would become so great again that the developers would have to take notice. I think they might be reconsidering at this point.

I'm with you on that one, I knew it was only a matter of time before a mainstream studio really went to town with a PC game and showed the rest of world what you can achieve if you actually target the platforms strengths.

The disparity between quality in games and what is achievable on the hardware we have has been getting steadily bigger, correcting that difference was never going to be a gradual improvement over time, it's going to snap quickly back into place it just needs a catalyst to start it, enter BF3.

I have no doubt in my mind that BF3 will be an amazing game and I will be playing it for the next 3+ years online, but what is almost as exciting is the reaction it's going to cause in the rest of the development studios, DICE setting a good example is going to do wonders for the PC platform, I have no doubt in my mind.
 
I've always liked Carmack. Haven't always agreed with him but I have respect for him and he's someone in the industry I feel like I could just sit down with him and shoot the shit for several hours and have a good time.
 
Great interview, thanks for the link!

Such a relief to hear that textures will be high res on the PC. I was very worried there for a while watching the latest "Authority" footage (boxes/crates extremely low res).

"You can spend a hundred million dollars on a game right now, and if you did that focused on the PC, you would be out of business". Too bad it has to be like this, and no surprise that this is reality and have been for a while. I would just like that reality to change (not happening).

Very curious how his change in development strategy will effect the look of Rage 2 for the PC.Still very excited about rage, as long as it has enough loot and customization :D everything else is bound to be great judging from the videos so far.
 
Fantastic interview. A must watch. I have the utmost respect for JC. I think if he and Id goes back to development for the PC first, I think we will see some or at least 1 impressive PC game in the near future.
 
btw Mr Carmack when the 360 was released the current ATi cards x1800 series were already more powerful than what was in the 360 by a fair amt..............so consoles were never really on par with PCs to begin with......
While true, you can't write direct-to-metal on a PC with an X1800. You can get much closer to that on an X360, which means you can get away from the API overhead (mainly hits incurred by locking/unlocking). The consoles are less powerful, but they do allow you do get further away from the overhead of the rendering API and narrow the performance gap (and obviously they push far fewer pixels per frame, which always helps).
 
Yea, that was a good interview. I hope Carmack continues to do what he obviously loves to do, that level of enthusiasm bodes well for the future of gaming.
 
Not sure what he meant about the direct-to-metal comment, I was under the impression that Xbox games were locked to DirectX as the graphics and input API?

Consoles have never really excelled in graphics compared to PCs, even on launch day if you're running a high end rig such as SLI or Crossfire, you have a way more powerful PC, after about 2 generations of new graphics hardware (about 3 years) the average PC gamer is running console equivalent hardware or faster.

When you get about 4 generation gap which we're at now the PC hardware is a good order of magnitude faster (approx 10x faster, or more if you splash out on the hardware)
 
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