Carmack on next-gen hardware

Speaking at QuakeCon last week Carmack revealed that id is working on a secretive title for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and did not mention the Nintendo Revolution. Carmack refused to reveal any details on the game, but did say we can expect the game to be released on all formats at around the same time. Commenting on the next-gen console hardware Carmack said the Xbox 360 is much like its predecessor, being very easy to develop on thanks to good development tools. He went on to add that the PlayStation 3 is very much like a PC in that Sony is offering a more open source environment.

While Carmack was quite diplomatic with his thoughts on the next-gen consoles, id CEO Todd Hollenshead was more open with his thoughts when speaking to US website Game Informer.

“I’m not really one to put words in John’s mouth but what I do know is we’ve had 360 stuff for a while and it was relatively easy to bring our internal project onto 360,” said Hollenshead.

“We just got the PS3 stuff recently and it was relatively more difficult to bring that up on the PS3. So John’s first impressions are, “360 great, PS3 – pain in my ass.“”

This hasn’t, however, deterred the team from continuing with PlayStation 3 development.

“I think we’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t think that’s going to ultimately change the way we’re going to approach developing on PS3. [Carmack] knows from a technology horsepower standpoint that it’ll do everything that we want it to do, so we’re committed to it.“

Hollenshead added that they will not be pushed into releasing the game and that they “want the gameplay to dictate the timing, not the other way around.” He ended by saying how they are not going to show something at E3 just for the sake of showing something, however, he thinks that it is probable that the game will appear at E3 3006.