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It Came from QuakeCon: id Closes Mobile Development As It Focuses on 'Doom 4'

posted August 3rd, 2012 12:28 PM EDT by Brad Nicholson in iPad Games, iPhone games, iPod touch games, News

Talk about mega bummer. id Software is shelving mobile development for the moment, as the studio ramps up work on Doom 4 -- a blown-up, presumably super AAA title.

At QuakeCon 2012, John Carmack talked briefly about this decision during his keynote at the event, explaining that Doom 4 requires the services of its mobile branch. Carmack also expressed that he's saddened by the shuttering of id's mobile development -- he's digs tinkering with the platform.

"We did make the decision to close up our mobile development, which saddens me a lot, in that I love doing the mobile work -- taking that time, spending a month, a year or something working on a mobile project, but we had some developers on there that we wanted to bring onto the Doom 4 project," Carmack said during the keynote, as reported by The Verge,

Carmack revealed that Bethesda is looking for grand slams, and apparently so is id. Once it ships Doom 3: BFG, "essentially everybody" at id will focus on Doom 4. A handful of iOS projects, as well as a finished one, have been left in the can.

[via The Verge]

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  • famousringo

    No great loss. I'm struggling to recall the last great game that Id released on any platform. Quake 3?

    Carmack knows his tech, for sure, but Id's game designers are about as dull and uninspired as any in the business.

    • oooooomonkey

      I The great game was the original DOOM, apart from that nothing special that springs to my mind.

    • Adams Immersive

      I’ve always liked Id’s engines/quality/performance, but their game play (especially Doom 3) has often disappointed me. I hope they find their footing!

      Quake Wars is my favorite FPS games of all time (maybe even favorite game period). Of course, QW was made by Splash Damage using Id’s engine and characters/weapons.

      • http://profiles.google.com/fleshman1992 Laszlo Tuss

        Doom 3 and dissapointment in one text?
        Sh!t just got real.

        Doom3 is the best horrror shooter of all time.

      • Adams Immersive

        It’s probably the best I’ve played! (Prey and BioShock don’t quite count, but they could be rivals for the crown.)

        Visually, it looked amazing, and there were certain very impressive set pieces. I did enjoy it.

        And yet still it disappointed me: long stretches of identical Imp attacks, monsters waiting for hours in little closets to jump out at me... it got kind of monotonous and relied too much on the same kind of scare over and over. Also very linear in progression.

    • GSJ1977

      They certainly haven't released anything good on iOS so yeah, no loss here except loss of potential.

  • http://twitter.com/hippiemanx Bruce Morrison

    Remember that time id said they were going to put out an iOS game every 4 months, some new IP some classic games?  Yeah...

  • http://twitter.com/try2bcool69 Jay G

    I would be happy if they would just take all of the driving and fetching out of Rage and re-release it.  It's an amazingly visceral shooter when you aren't doing the annoying, length-stretching crap.

  • jindofox

    Profound sadness. I really liked their Doom port, as well as Carmack's notes on how it was made. Their take on Wolf3D was fun, too. We never got Doom 2, add-on WAD support, or any Quake games on mobile. I have zero interest in their modern PC stuff.

  • http://www.handsometrustworthy.com/ Armaan Khan

    That's really unfortunate. I've been hoping that they'd make a Rage RPG for iPhone/iPad.

  • http://twitter.com/BulkSlash BulkSlash

    I love id, but I do think since they were bought by ZeniMax there's been a change in the company.

    The recent re-release of Quake 4 and now the re-release of Doom 3 almost seem desperate, as if after Rage underperformed they need to make some quick cash.

    I hope I'm wrong, but I'm still very sad not to get Doom II or any of the Quake games on iOS. I reckon if id ported the Quake III engine to iOS we could even get ports of Jedi Knight and Elite Force...

  • Tim Cant

    FFS QUAKE

  • dv8godd

    Why they never brought Orcs & Elves over from the DS and instead focused on trying to retrofit their classic but dated FPSes onto iPhone I will never understand. Their RPG iOS games were okay... but still felt like they were milking their own corpse.

    Something that played like their RPGs but running with the Rage tech could have been huge.

    As long as their mobile effort was going to continue to be so misdirected, then no loss. It didn't have to be that way though... a few smarter choices and they could have been at the top of their game again instead of back to trying to resurrect dead IPs.

    • Adam Gibson

      Not to mention iD Software does not seem to get the iOS platform when it comes to porting the games to iphone/ipad.  They really must upgrade the control methods to be up to date to make the games more usable.  If they would have updated Doom Classic to have controls similar to N.O.V.A it would make the game much more playable.  I loved doom back in the day with mouse control but their basic control methods they implemented on iOS just doesn't cut it nowadays that N.O.V.A and others like it have come out with good sensor and virtual joystick controls.

  • Goose

    I'm with Tim, where's my quake already?

  • Maniacfive

    I'm possibly one of the only people that genuinely enjoyed Doom 3, and still has his Xbox steel book copy despite by having an Xbox to play it on.

    However. What studio does this? I'm not a dev. But surely, your mobile guys are specialised in, ya know, mobile development? I guess it goes someway explain the lacklustre mobile efforts. Rage was alright, but given the file size... No way. Deleted in days.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CKBNMJGLGCBQOSH2BM264QIHLI Bridget

    Well.   Here's an announcement I WONT be getting excited for.

    I loved Doom 1 & 2, and alot of other similar titles from that era.   Doom 3, however, was absolutely horrible and followed alot of the many, MANY trends I hate from this damn genre that have been so common lately.

    It's sad to see that Id has fallen into the "graphics trump all!!!!!111" trap that so many of the larger, stupider publishers are in.

    Oh well.  No loss here, then.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/W256JGENOYNCSBWRCAE624ZGTE JohnPayne79

    Doom 4 will set new standards


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