The thoughts of chairman Carmack

Game engine design genius and part-time rocketeer John Carmack has spoken at this weekend's QuakeCon to outline id's ongoing plans for development and some intriguing details on id's next PC and 360 project.

First up, Carmack revealed that the next, mysteriously unannounced, id title will be an enormous 3D action game and that it'll be its biggest project since the rather splendid Wolfenstein. Carmack moved to reassure fans that gameplay rather than graphics will be the focus and it will use an enhanced version of id's Megatexture technology to produce much bigger outdoor environments. Apparently it's going to feature "a lot of people" and it will signal a 'new direction' for the company, with Carmack confidently predicting it should be a blockbuster.

However, Carmack also said the Texan developer will continue to produce games which id themselves enjoy, so perhaps we shouldn't expect too radical a departure from the dev's FPS heritage. While Carmack admitted that the title will be developed simultaneously on Xbox 360, the PC still remains the main development platform for the company and its current project will include multi-processor support on both console and PC platforms.

Carmack also revealed he had had a lot of fun developing games for mobile phones and that he had considered porting them over to Nintendo DS, so perhaps a multi-platform future for id shouldn't be ruled out altogether.

Carmack went on to say he reckoned that Quake 3 had been the company's 'purest game' - he thought there had been a distinct lack of progress in development software over the past few years. Carmack additionally offered the thought that the mod community was falling away because of the complexity of developing mods for some of today's ultra sophisticated games.