id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms [Oct 07, 2011, 9:33 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Kotaku asks the musical question "Why Was The PC Launch of Rage Such A "Cluster!@#$"?," getting answers from id on the topic, who express frustration with problems that were largely caused by driver issues. Along the way they also address how the game being designed for consoles holds back the PC edition. "You can choose to design a game around the specs of a high-end PC and make console versions that fail to hit the design point, or design around the specs of the consoles and have a high-end PC provide incremental quality improvements," John Carmack tells them. "We chose the latter." He also bluntly addresses why this makes sense for id (emphasis Kotaku's):
"We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games," Carmack added. "That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console versions will have larger audiences than the PC version. A high end PC is nearly 10 times as powerful as a console, and we could unquestionably provide a better experience if we chose that as our design point and we were able to expend the same amount of resources on it. Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on. A game built with a tenth the resources on a platform 10 times as powerful would be an inferior product in almost all cases."
News flash: these guys don't at ALL care about you.
Once you get over that, anything Carmack or Newell or whoever says, is here nor there. It's just businessman talk. They're business people, in it mainly to make money. Consoles mean more money, so they gear games to the consoles. However I totally agree with what he said about technology vs. development. We are without question at the point of diminshing returns for game engines - how much further can graphics go? Is there a game you could do on id Tech 4 that wouldn't work on id Tech 5? Rage features the most story id has ever put into a game, and even then it's just a bunch of people telling you to run errands. But who cares, I kind of like it. I like the races and all that. It's a pretty fun game. I've had no problems on my machine (GTX 560 Ti), but I did just build it 6 months ago.
I'm usually playing 2 games, and nearing the end of DXHR it's like No Country For Old Men, and Rage is like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Once you get over that, anything Carmack or Newell or whoever says, is here nor there. It's just businessman talk. They're business people, in it mainly to make money. Consoles mean more money, so they gear games to the consoles. However I totally agree with what he said about technology vs. development. We are without question at the point of diminshing returns for game engines - how much further can graphics go? Is there a game you could do on id Tech 4 that wouldn't work on id Tech 5? Rage features the most story id has ever put into a game, and even then it's just a bunch of people telling you to run errands. But who cares, I kind of like it. I like the races and all that. It's a pretty fun game. I've had no problems on my machine (GTX 560 Ti), but I did just build it 6 months ago.
I'm usually playing 2 games, and nearing the end of DXHR it's like No Country For Old Men, and Rage is like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
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