You read it wrong. He's saying that, if Rage had been PC exclusive, it would have had a much smaller budget, and that he'd rather have the budget to realize his team's vision, even if it means a rough launch like this one.
You can agree or disagree, but at least read what he's saying before doing so.
Something major is out of whack with your reasoning here...;) You believe Carmack states that the PC is "ten times more powerful" than a console, and that to write a game program taking advantage of "ten times more power" would require
less money than it did to "reach his team's vision" of a
ten-times less powerful game? Heh...;)
I think that what he meant was that he didn't get a large enough budget to take the time and to do the work required to properly address the PC's far more powerful & capable environment. And yet, id software released a PC version of the game anyway, didn't they? I think it's more on the order of Bethesda offering Carmack $10M to do RAGE and Carmack complaining that wasn't enough money to do a proper PC port because of the extra work required. Regardless of the details of the situation, id software put its name on the PC version of the game and allowed Bethesda to ship it anyway, didn't they?
Ordinarily I don't post so much--but Carmack's remarks really burn me up, especially coming as they do *after the fact* of the game's PC release. Hopefully, Bethesda is not being a *ick with refunds...;)
It is well known that I cannot err--and so, if you should happen across an error in anything I have written you can be absolutely sure that *I* did not write it!...;)