John Camack iPhone plans

Doom developer id Software is deeply interested in designing for the iPhone, says one of its co-founders and key programmers. John Carmack notes that the company's id Mobile division was in fact looking at producing a game for the launch of the App Store, but the scheduling and resources available simply would not have worked. "I really regret not having something at launch," says Carmack.

He adds however that id has a title it wants to develop solely for the iPhone, which would be a "graphical tour de force" and fit in with one of the company's earlier game series, which beyond Doom includes lines like Quake, Wolfenstein and Orcs & Elves. The iPhone is said to be particularly appealing because in opposition to most cellphones, it allows games to be dozens of megabytes on size, rather than kilobytes.

Its hardware is also said to be unusually powerful, roughly equivalent to an Xbox or a PlayStation 2. "The graphics are a little lower but the RAM is a lot higher," says Carmack. "You could easily spend $10 million on an iPhone game, but the market just can't support that yet."

id may in the future attempt attempt a massively multiplayer (MMO) game through cellphones, Carmack muses, but if this happens, it will require small steps. "I want to go step by step -- where we do a multiplayer game, then multiplayer with some persistence, then maybe further," he observes.

by MacNN Staff