Carmack Blames Jobs For Apple Gaming Failure

Ever wonder why Apple computers aren't decent gaming systems? John Carmack says the fault lies entirely with Steve Jobs.

In his QuakeCon keynote address, the id programming guru said Apple's apparent inability to compete for the gamer demographic can be traced directly to Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, who Carmack claims doesn't "deeply get" gaming. "The truth is Steve Jobs doesn't care about games," Carmack added in an interview with Eurogamer. "This is going to be one of those things that I say something in an interview and it gets fed back to him and I'm on his shithead list for awhile on that, until he needs me to do something else there. But I think that that's my general opinion. He's not a gamer."

"It's difficult to ask somebody to get behind something they don't really believe in," he said. "I mean obviously he believes in the music and the iTunes and that whole side of things, and the media side of things, and he gets it and he pushes it and they do wonderful things with that, but he's not a gamer. That's just the bottom line about it."

Nonetheless, Carmack expressed enthusiasm for Apple's iPhone, calling it a "potentially extremely important platform" and suggesting that it might even make serious inroads against the PSP. "There are structural reasons why it's not going to kill the DS in there, but it certainly should be in there in the running there as a device that you can get modern, quality games for something, and I think it's a great platform for content and new talent on there," he said. He also revealed that id has a couple of early-stage projects for the iPhone in the works, but said none of them are ports of established id franchises.

Eurogamer's full interview with idmeister John Carmack can be read here.

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I greatly admire your choice of corner graphic.

-- Steve

Malygris:

Ever wonder why Apple computers aren't decent gaming systems?

Because Microsoft owns DirectX?

What about Marathon?

bluemarsman:
BUY HALO

Post edited by Microsoft.

bluemarsman:
What about Marathon?

*checks his calendar*

Right.

Yes, yes, Steve Jobs is the problem. Not that billionaire monolith Microsoft could buy every video game company on Earth and still have enough money left over to the souls of everyone left on Earth. As for the rest of the article, I honestly don't think the iPhone is going to do anything to hurt the sales of the PSP or the DS. The demographics of the PSP and DS don't merge with that of the iPhone. And besides that, people don't buy the iPhone to play 'Generic 2D Side Scroller,' they bought it to surf the web on the go, play music, and, well, I could list the rest of the features, but I don't want to become an Apple ad---BUY THE NEW iPHONE3G!---sorry about that...As for the whole issue at hand: if Carmack wants to get Mac's into gaming, then he can do it!

Zombie_King:
if Carmack wants to get Mac's into gaming, then he can do it!

I'd prefer he focus on getting id back into gaming first. Doom 3 and Quake 4 were big disappointments from my once-favorite developer.

Personally, I'd like to see Apple make a dent in MS's traditional dominance of the OS market. In order to do that, you need gamers. After all these years of marketing and hype, Windows is still the only platform on which you can play state of the art games, browse the web and have access to comprehensive productivity suites. The performance of any of these applications is not an issue -- it's what you can do on a particular platform that's important. If I could play the latest games on an Apple or Linux box then I probably wouldn't still be using Windows. Both Linux and Apple have a lot of marketing and standards catch-up to do before this will happen. The sad thing is that I don't see any real initiative on the part of either party to make this happen.

Until competing OS makers realize that games are one of the core reasons people won't switch then they will always be playing second fiddle to Microsoft. The rest of the world can keep their preconceptions about gaming -- the fact of the matter is that it has always led the performance sector of the PC market and likely always will. And where the performance sector goes, so goes the rest of the industry.

Well, theres that a mac is a bit harder to 'build' unlike a pc...
You know, unless Mac started selling there OS disks. (It be news to me...)
Quite frankly, I'd perfer to build/upgrade my PC, rather than have to go through Mac to buy an overpriced Mac, that I can't even play half my games on it...

Zombie_King:
Yes, yes, Steve Jobs is the problem. Not that billionaire monolith Microsoft could buy every video game company on Earth and still have enough money left over to the souls of everyone left on Earth.

[snip]

As for the whole issue at hand: if Carmack wants to get Mac's into gaming, then he can do it!

Right. Even though Microsoft will actually provide developer support for games, whereas Apple will say, "Good luck with that!" Right now it just doesn't make business sense for Carmack to go out on a limb for a smaller market segment (no offense) that will cost more to develop for.

Y'know, if Jobs had said the right words after MacWorld '99 I wonder if Bungie would've gone over to the Xbox in 2000. (It's been asked, at many times and by many people, but no one who knows is willing to answer.)

-- Steve

HobbesMkii:

Malygris:

Ever wonder why Apple computers aren't decent gaming systems?

Because Microsoft owns DirectX?

Carmack would probably say there's always OpenGL, given ID's support for that API he's one of the few people entitled to mention it.

Personally I don't see much of a fuss here, Jobs isn't currently bothered about gaming therefore Apple don't really make much effort to compete in that area. It's fair comment and, let's face it, hardly harming their business.

Gift.