14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest studios currently active in the video game industry is id Software, the company that brought gamers many great experiences with titles like Wolfenstein, Doom or Quake. The studio was bought a few months ago by Bethesda parent company ZeniMax, but things are still going great in terms of development of titles like Rage or Doom 4.
Speaking about these titles and about the comparisons between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, one of the leaders of the studio, John Carmack, revealed a few interesting things. While the Blu-ray disc standard for any PS3 offers a higher storage capacity, which is great for big titles such as Rage or Doom 4, the PS3 is still a bit more challenging, as the development process definitely went more smoothly for the Xbox 360.
He said that upcoming title Doom 4 would “almost certainly” come on three DVDs for the Xbox 360, but the team was working hard on compressions methods that would enable another id-developed title, Rage, to ship on just two discs. “We would love to set the thing up where it filled one Blu-ray disc versus three DVDs, which is about the right mix, but the game just ... we can't cut it into a third like that. We can cut it into two pieces. We've got two large wastelands on there. We just couldn't make an arbitrary cut.”
He also followed up with saying that Doom 4 couldn't be compressed no matter what in order to fill two DVDs. “Doom 4 is being set up so that it's almost certainly going to be cut up to three DVDs versus one Blu-ray. At least they've got the ability because of the way it's structured.”
But Carmack joins the group of many developers who believe that even though it is more powerful the PS3 is more complicated than other platforms. “The 360 was easier to certainly to get to where we are now. More sweat equity had to be put into the PS3. There's a little bit more theoretical raw performance on the PS3, so we've got a little bit more headroom.”
Overall, id Software will certainly deliver some great experiences with its upcoming games and players won't really care if these are on three DVDs or just one Blu-ray disc.