Nintendo Wii U Is 'Slam Dunk' for id Tech 5 Games, says John CarmackNintendo's Wii U may not be significantly more powerful than PS3 or Xbox 360, according to Shigeru Miyamoto, but it's still powerful enough to draw the interest of developers like id Software's John Carmack. id's technical director, speaking with IndustryGamers recently, shared his thoughts on id's relationship with Nintendo in the past and how things could very well be changing now with Wii U. Indeed, Carmack said that id Tech 5-based games like Rage would be a "slam dunk" on Wii U.
"Pretty early on we had a pretty negative experience with Nintendo back in the Super Nintendo days. They were a different company then. They were very much about tightening, controlling the sorts of things that they want to have happen on their consoles. But that’s long in the past," Carmack began. "The issues in the current time have just been technology missteps, where we’re out of step with them; we were at a clear point where designing for the 360, PS3 and PC made lots of sense. But you couldn’t have one content development project naturally bridge the gap. If anything, I’m much more inclined to want to develop something for Nintendo now because I’ve got a 6-year-old son and we play Wii and DS games all the time. I’d be happy to do something there. It just hasn’t been the right fit for where id Software is with our projects and technologies."
"I think there may be more good uses of that Wii U tablet than there are for the current generation with Kinect and Move."
The good news for Nintendo is that Carmack doesn't just feel drawn to Nintendo because of his son; he also thinks that the power of the new Wii U should make hardcore games using id Tech 5 very easy to bring over to the console.
"It should be a slam dunk to move over to Tech 5 games on there. We haven’t had that discussion yet as a company, but it seems technically like it’s a valid target, so I’m always happy to go ahead and get a new box in and see what it takes to bring it up and see the pros and cons of the choices they made. I think they probably made a fairly intelligent decision with the Wii U," Carmack continued.
We also discussed the unique Wii U tablet controller and how that might influence id. Carmack seems more intrigued by the tablet controller than the motion controllers we've seen on other platforms.
"I think there may be more good uses of that [Wii U tablet] than [there are for] the current generation with Kinect and Move... there’s clearly a subset of games for which things like that are appropriate for," he said. "We’ve been going on with how can we use those types of motion things with Rage and it’s hard to take a game that’s fundamentally designed around a controller and get value out of doing some of those other things, while adding extra touch interfaces there, that seems like something that almost every game could make some use of without it being just like, 'Oh, we have to do something like this.' Because if you remember, when the DS came out, there was a lot of talk about how, ‘Isn’t this going to be just a gimmick?’ But really it did turn out to be quite a good interface to build on."
At this point, we'd be shocked if we didn't see some good support from id on the Wii U once Nintendo ships the console next year.
