Here's my problem with the whole driver argument Carmack is making. This largely spawned from a discussion had on today's Tested.com podcast. While I obviously had to pay for my video card and it is the chip manufacturer's job to keep it supplied with drivers, in the case of RAGE, I paid id for it, not NVIDIA or ATI. It's id's job to ensure that their brand new engine works properly and if that requires special driver considerations, it's their responsibility to contact NVIDIA and ATI and get that done
before the game comes out. If they called these companies and said "John Carmack would like to talk to you to make sure id Tech 5 works with your cards", they'd probably have their lead drivers engineers on the phone with him instantly. There is absolutely no excuse for drivers not being ready for this game that was in development for 6 years well in advance of launch. For Carmack to claim it's all the video chip maker's faults when he apparently made no effort to loop them in on his tech is ridiculous.
Frankly, I see this as a potential failing of their Zenimax acquisition. Bethesda hasn't put out a game I can think of that didn't have major launch problems and this seems to be the latest one. They seem to have an aversion to setting realistic release dates and sticking to those no matter what, even if the products clearly aren't ready yet. As someone who gave my money to them and no one else for RAGE, I think it's perfectly fair to put this bad launch on their shoulders. Had they contacted NVIDIA and ATI 6 months ago, I wonder if these problems would be here now.
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