Revered developer id Software has been no stranger to news this year. With the open beta release of Quake Live and the announcement that Rage will not ship this year, curiosity about what’s going on at the studio is still in the air. In an interview with Gamespot, id CEO Todd Hollenshead talked about a few notable topics. Firstly, Rage is still not shipping in 2009, at this point however, Hollenshead can confirm that the technology behind it is done and expects it to come with multiple disks, “The game, ultimately, when it’s done on our servers, will be huge. I don’t know, 100GB? But then we’ll have to condense it down to price it down, and then do the passes on actually what goes into the levels. But we fully expect to saturate a Blu-ray disc, and it will be on multiple discs on the 360 and, obviously, multiple DVDs on PCs as well.”
Hollenshead had plenty to say on the subject of PC gaming, claiming he would still prefer the traditional PC setup as opposed to playing with a controller, however when it comes to releasing hot titles it can’t just be on one platform alone, “In terms of your triple-A, big-budget, big-market title, that you really have to be cross-platform to be successful, unless you’re a first party.” Just like most developers, Hollenshead has also acknowledged the huge problem that is piracy on the PC but also mentions the disappearing retail space for PC games, “The other thing is, is that retailers are more focused on consoles than they are on the PC platform, primarily, I think, because Microsoft is campaigning for the 360, probably to some extent to the expense of Windows-based games.”
On the topic of E3, well, id wasn’t there last year with a booth and according to Hollenshead they weren’t going to have a booth which is the primary reason why they left the Entertainment Software Association in 2008. However, expect id at this year’s E3 in some other publisher’s booth with some Wolfenstein action alongside some other unannounced items.
