Future of id on PC

Ok for those of you who haven't seen the keynote speech at quakecon you should, it is a pretty candid and informative watch, however it is just short of 90 minutes long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28

First a few things before I get into my thoughts:

John Carmack, in his speech at quakecon said that developing rage for PC 2nd was a mistake and that their next title (doom4?) would be PC first.

Looking at the sales numbers for RAGE I see that the first week, the XBOX 360 verson sold 400,000 copies, ps3 250,000 copies and the PC verson sold 59,000 copies. Now, the article I read didn't specify if they had DD+B&M or if it is just brick and mortar sales.

Will id see the abysmal PC sales as a result of the mistake (johns own words) of developing RAGE for consoles first, PC 2nd or will they scrap their plans to develop PC first like John said they would in the speech? Even if DD sales aren't added in, I highly doubt that 75% of rage sales are through DD, although that would be great.

Or will id pull an epic, call us all pirates and then make all future titles on consoles only because the PC gamers are expected to buy buggy software or no more games for us (thanks cliffy b).

What are your guys' thoughts?

What sales numbers? Where did you read it? If thats 59.000 retail PC.. then that is REALLY good sales. Even if you make that 50% and 50% online that would be over 100K for a game that was sold fairly expensive on pc (60 dollars).. Personally though, ID been lol for some time now. Not worth my money at the moment for anything new from them.. We will see though. They did go and fix alot of RAGE really quick though trash talked folks instead of admitting there own mistake in QA. jedikevin2

Every article I read that had a John Carmack quote regarding the RAGE technical issues are actually quotes from the keynote speech from 3 months ago.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/88192/weekly-sales-analysis-8-october-2011-rage-amp-nba-2k12/

How is 59,000 good? Starcraft 2 sold 1.5 million in 2 days.

It all depends on Zenimax and looking at the companies they own, Bethesda, not sure they care what Carmack thinks, console oriented games that are made just good enough to sell, not good enough to be played without problems (they might also pull a "New Vegas" and let id have a go at how they want to make a game, since Obsidian was a 3rd party).

For starters I don't care about Doom 4 at all, few care about it nowadays, Doom 3 sales prove that, there'll be even fewer sales on 4, it'll be a mistake to focus only on PC, no id game that is part of a series is interesting to most people nowadays, but even so I hope they'll make a Quake 5 that'll be like 3 only with better graphics and the focus would be on PC, other than that don't care even if they make new games, there are far too many great companies (way better than id) and great games to care about a company that used to make fantastic games more than one decade ago.

It all depends on Zenimax and looking at the companies they own, Bethesda, not sure they care what Carmack thinks, console oriented games that are made just good enough to sell, not good enough to be played without problems (they might also pull a "New Vegas" and let id have a go at how they want to make a game, since Obsidian was a 3rd party).

For starters I don't care about Doom 4 at all, few care about it nowadays, Doom 3 sales prove that, there'll be even fewer sales on 4, it'll be a mistake to focus only on PC, no id game that is part of a series is interesting to most people nowadays, but even so I hope they'll make a Quake 5 that'll be like 3 only with better graphics and the focus would be on PC, other than that don't care even if they make new games, there are far too many great companies (way better than id) and great games to care about a company that used to make fantastic games more than one decade ago.

DanielDust

The question was "What do you think is going to happen?" Not "Do you care about what is going to happen?"

[QUOTE="jedikevin2"]What sales numbers? Where did you read it? If thats 59.000 retail PC.. then that is REALLY good sales. Even if you make that 50% and 50% online that would be over 100K for a game that was sold fairly expensive on pc (60 dollars).. Personally though, ID been lol for some time now. Not worth my money at the moment for anything new from them.. We will see though. They did go and fix alot of RAGE really quick though trash talked folks instead of admitting there own mistake in QA. GummiRaccoon

Every article I read that had a John Carmack quote regarding the RAGE technical issues are actually quotes from the keynote speech from 3 months ago.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/88192/weekly-sales-analysis-8-october-2011-rage-amp-nba-2k12/

How is 59,000 good? Starcraft 2 sold 1.5 million in 2 days.

LOL.. Not saying its great sales but 59K retail (vgchartz can only track retail), on a PC game is not bad. Also, why is Starcraft 2 a measure of anything? for example, didn't resistance 3 sell like 150K copies world wide? Not EVERY game sales extremely well. 59K retail in 2 weeks on Pc is fairly good. you start adding in all the DD sales and things look actually fairly good. But, rage probably dumped ALOT of money into marketing so things might turn fairly bad for them in the long hall.

[QUOTE="DanielDust"]

It all depends on Zenimax and looking at the companies they own, Bethesda, not sure they care what Carmack thinks, console oriented games that are made just good enough to sell, not good enough to be played without problems (they might also pull a "New Vegas" and let id have a go at how they want to make a game, since Obsidian was a 3rd party).

For starters I don't care about Doom 4 at all, few care about it nowadays, Doom 3 sales prove that, there'll be even fewer sales on 4, it'll be a mistake to focus only on PC, no id game that is part of a series is interesting to most people nowadays, but even so I hope they'll make a Quake 5 that'll be like 3 only with better graphics and the focus would be on PC, other than that don't care even if they make new games, there are far too many great companies (way better than id) and great games to care about a company that used to make fantastic games more than one decade ago.

GummiRaccoon

The question was "What do you think is going to happen?" Not "Do you care about what is going to happen?"

That Epic is a great example for how id was in their career so far.

Thank you ID, now go die in a corner somewere while the newer and better developers take the spotlight.

though trash talked folks instead of admitting there own mistake in QA. jedikevin2

id spent months working with AMD on drivers and on release day AMD compiled the wrong build and didn't even bother to take it down once word spread out it's broken.

You're right, id was totally in the wrong.

Meanwhile the Nvidia camp enjoyed the game.

[QUOTE="jedikevin2"]though trash talked folks instead of admitting there own mistake in QA. Baranga

id spent months working with AMD on drivers and on release day AMD compiled the wrong build and didn't even bother to take it down once word spread out it's broken.

You're right, id was totally in the wrong.

Meanwhile the Nvidia camp enjoyed the game.

And at the same time, that problem also showed up on the nvidia drivers just not as bad. Also, the error was in a prethara of AMd drivers not just ones compiled around the release. It was just a bad problem from the start. AMD messed up, ID messed up. But, the damage control on ID to just point the blame at AMD was fairly hilarious.

-We don't know the sales numbers.

-I cannot wait to see what id tech 5 is capable of with Doom 4 and PC leading. I'm really interested to see if they're gonna go the Doom or Doom 3 route with it's design.

Even if those sales figures are accurate (which I doubt, if DD is not taken into account), I think a lot of people have held off on getting RAGE because of some of the technical issues around the release. Yes, there were faulty graphics drivers, but that wasn't the only issue with the game - lack of graphical options, auto-detecting system specs and all the rest of it were also part of the issue.

I still haven't bought the game myself, yet, because I was waiting for that first patch, which now seems to have resolved a lot of things. I think sales of the game on PC will gradually increase over the next year. But I don't think it will achieve the same number of sales as the console versions, simply because they have become the emphasis for most shooters these days. For that reason, you can't really compare the sales of an RTS game like the latest Starcraft, which is more PC-centric, to the sales of a multi-platform FPS game. A better comparison would be a PC-centric shooter like STALKER against a console-centric shooter like RAGE.

Given the current state of the industy, no matter what Carmack says, I have to seriously doubt that the PC will be the lead platform for DOOM 4, because it's harder to reduce a game down to make it fit on a console than it is to scale up a console game to work on the PC, at least at the moment. Look at Crytek as a good example of this - they had to build a new version of the CryEngine in order to develop Crysis 2 for the console.

When (if) the new consoles finally come out, supporting better APIs than DX9, we'll probably start seeing more PC games built with DX11 (or whatever iteration it is) from the ground up, but it will still be multi-platform development, because that is the cheaper and easier way to develop large budget games these days.

When it comes to ID Software as a developer, I don't know why anyone is surprised that their latest game is still, at heart, an old school shooter. They have never been any good at 'story' in their games, and unless they really shake up their internal development process, I don't see that changing any time soon. So in that regard, they have become less relevant in the shooter gaming space, and I doubt they will ever compete with the likes of Valve in terms of story-telling.

More Doom and Quake. And Rage 2 only for consoles.

[QUOTE="jedikevin2"]What sales numbers? Where did you read it? If thats 59.000 retail PC.. then that is REALLY good sales. Even if you make that 50% and 50% online that would be over 100K for a game that was sold fairly expensive on pc (60 dollars).. Personally though, ID been lol for some time now. Not worth my money at the moment for anything new from them.. We will see though. They did go and fix alot of RAGE really quick though trash talked folks instead of admitting there own mistake in QA. GummiRaccoon

Every article I read that had a John Carmack quote regarding the RAGE technical issues are actually quotes from the keynote speech from 3 months ago.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/88192/weekly-sales-analysis-8-october-2011-rage-amp-nba-2k12/

How is 59,000 good? Starcraft 2 sold 1.5 million in 2 days.

On-Topic, they should also check their pricing... Not worth 60$

VG charts does not track ANYTHING.

They literally poll some people comign out of a few gamestop/babbages, etc and extrapulate from that.

Or in other words, they are WAY off in most cases even when ti comes to console sales, nevermind PC sales.

No one takes their numbers seriously.

For example, before CD Project Red mentioend that they sold 1 million units on PC, they had it at 80,000 units sold.

Ridiculous!

We also know from valve that Portla 2 did better on PC than consoles, yet accordign to VG charts e xbox 360 alone sold like 10 times more copies.

I guarantee you that Rage sold probably as much as the Ps3, at elast 1/2 the sales (probably more) were digital, so in terms of profit for Id, it beat out the Ps3.

nobody gives concrete numbers on pc sales. Not 100% sure, but it could be because steam doesnt want numbers released. Why do pc gamers like to troll their own platform so much? Rage is a good game, had a bit of flaky launch mostly due to amds poor opengl support and them releasing the wrong driver.

nobody gives concrete numbers on pc sales. Not 100% sure, but it could be because steam doesnt want numbers released. Why do pc gamers like to troll their own platform so much? Rage is a good game, had a bit of flaky launch mostly due to amds poor opengl support and them releasing the wrong driver.

TerrorRizzing

I honestly could care less.. ID is no longer the top dog in the genre they created in the beginning.. IT was wild when people were getting so hyped with games like Rage when ID hasn't made a game since Doom 3.. Rage and Doom 3 maybe good games, but they are not the best any more.. So I honestly don't feel a great loss from ID going to console or what not.sSubZerOo

Nobody makes shooting feel as good as id does. Rage's pistol feels like a goddamn shotgun, the shotguns like bloody cannons and the AK-47 like a minigun.

I have a hard time understanding why their weapons and movement feel so good, especially compared to the pea-shooters of Valve or the Call of Duties. As far as I'm concerned Rage is the best shooter this decade.

I can't trust people that can't spell or pronounce id correctly, nor people that think Quake 4 was an id game:P

After Doom 3 and Quake 4, I said I'd never buy anything from ID again, glad I didn't buy Rage.couly

Doom 3 was a pretty good game and Quake 4 wasn't made by id.

I laugh at people comparing Epic or Crytek's engines to id's.

For starters I don't care about Doom 4 at all, few care about it nowadays, Doom 3 sales prove that, there'll be even fewer sales on 4, it'll be a mistake to focus only on PC, no id game that is part of a series is interesting to most people nowadays, but even so I hope they'll make a Quake 5 that'll be like 3 only with better graphics and the focus would be on PC, other than that don't care even if they make new games, there are far too many great companies (way better than id) and great games to care about a company that used to make fantastic games more than one decade ago.

DanielDust

I guess more than 3 million Doom 3 PC copies sold just isn't good enough to even consider making Doom 4 a PC exclusive. Lol.

Play the Blue Station mission of Rage and then say you don't want a Doom 4.

You have no idea.

Play the Blue Station mission of Rage and then say you don't want a Doom 4.

You have no idea.

Baranga

my thoughts are exactly the same, that level was 10/10 id shooter & i can only imagine what they do for doom 4

id Software can go screw itself for how arrogant and thick headed they were with the development of RAGE, no dedicated servers and no graphics settings at launch. And knowing what they did with Doom 3, I'd take Serious Sam 3: BFE over Doom 4 any day.

Such arrogance from developers whose newer titles have been eclipsed by several shooters that have been released.

ID Software is overrated, Doom 3 is a mediocre shooter, the only good thing about that game was graphics and Rage is a complete joke other than the artwork. If 400K people are going to buy a below average game like Rage because of hype, then so be it. That's laughable. Pc gamers are done with ID software after Rage, it was a slap in the face to PC gamers.Goro69

So I honestly don't feel a great loss from ID going to console or what not.sSubZerOo

id Software is responsible for making PCs not seem like only work devices.

[QUOTE="sSubZerOo"]So I honestly don't feel a great loss from ID going to console or what not.nameless12345

id Software is responsible for making PCs not seem like only work devices.

Wrong. :| ID was not the first pc game developer nor are they the last.. They may have created the FPS genre, but yet again that is not the entire PC platform.. They are a shadow of their former self and most would hardly call them the best dev, or even a great dev.. The last game they released since Rage was Doom 3, 7 years ago.. And many would argue that neither game is the best.

[QUOTE="GummiRaccoon"]

[QUOTE="jedikevin2"]What sales numbers? Where did you read it? If thats 59.000 retail PC.. then that is REALLY good sales. Even if you make that 50% and 50% online that would be over 100K for a game that was sold fairly expensive on pc (60 dollars).. Personally though, ID been lol for some time now. Not worth my money at the moment for anything new from them.. We will see though. They did go and fix alot of RAGE really quick though trash talked folks instead of admitting there own mistake in QA. jedikevin2

Every article I read that had a John Carmack quote regarding the RAGE technical issues are actually quotes from the keynote speech from 3 months ago.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/88192/weekly-sales-analysis-8-october-2011-rage-amp-nba-2k12/

How is 59,000 good? Starcraft 2 sold 1.5 million in 2 days.

LOL.. Not saying its great sales but 59K retail (vgchartz can only track retail), on a PC game is not bad. Also, why is Starcraft 2 a measure of anything? for example, didn't resistance 3 sell like 150K copies world wide? Not EVERY game sales extremely well. 59K retail in 2 weeks on Pc is fairly good. you start adding in all the DD sales and things look actually fairly good. But, rage probably dumped ALOT of money into marketing so things might turn fairly bad for them in the long hall.

[QUOTE="nameless12345"]

[QUOTE="sSubZerOo"]So I honestly don't feel a great loss from ID going to console or what not.sSubZerOo

id Software is responsible for making PCs not seem like only work devices.

Wrong. :| ID was not the first pc game developer nor are they the last.. They may have created the FPS genre, but yet again that is not the entire PC platform.. They are a shadow of their former self and most would hardly call them the best dev, or even a great dev.. The last game they released since Rage was Doom 3, 7 years ago.. And many would argue that neither game is the best.

Did you actually play Rage?

I understand why people were disappointed by Doom 3. But how can anyone possibly claim that missions like Dead City, Blue Station or Jackal Canyon aren't the best FPS experience since Quake?

Games like RAGE needs an initial boom in sales. I think that early demonstrations of it's techinical issues could have hurt it's image forever. Even though it's not hard to fix the game, it took 2 weeks so that could happen, at least with ATI cards. Even so it requires what is for most people, a fair amount of obscure knowledge. They lost it's momentum in sales, and it's their fault. However, in the end it will weight upon it's community.

I think most PC gamers buy their games from word of mouth.

PC gamer sees friend is playing RAGE on Steam: "Is that game any good? Im thinking about getting it"

Friend replies: "No its a buggy mess of a console game, dont bother!"

PC gamer says "Oh thats a shame, ill save my money for steam sales then."

If Rage wasnt such a mess at launch im sure it would have sold a lot more. I know at least 7 people on my friends list who didnt buy it because of the bugs, and thats just MY friends list. If the game is worth buying people will buy it.

IMO its in devs best interest to lead on PC with any multiplatform game, they should make their games the best they can be and THEN dumb them down for the consoles. I would love to see what id can do without those limitations, thats if they are capable of doing anything great anymore.

[QUOTE="nameless12345"]

[QUOTE="sSubZerOo"]So I honestly don't feel a great loss from ID going to console or what not.sSubZerOo

id Software is responsible for making PCs not seem like only work devices.

Wrong. :| ID was not the first pc game developer nor are they the last.. They may have created the FPS genre, but yet again that is not the entire PC platform.. They are a shadow of their former self and most would hardly call them the best dev, or even a great dev.. The last game they released since Rage was Doom 3, 7 years ago.. And many would argue that neither game is the best.

I plan on getting RAGE, but I don't think its worth anywhere near $60, I plan on getting it when its more like $18-$25, or lower.
While I know there are technical issues, I think the gameplay itself (including gunplay) will be great. Was a little dissappointed that the Co-op isn't the main campaign. But I guess a small co-op campaign is still good.

I don't know what to think on the ID/pc Situation. But I do hope that the next ID title (if it is Doom 4, I will be happy, I love the Doom games) I hope it is focused on pc first and foremost! (Make it on pc, then take crap out and put it on consoles, not make it for consoles and add crap then put it on pc)