id's Carmack: iPhone nearly as powerful as Xbox, PS2

by Randy Nelson on Aug 1st 2008 9:55PM

When he isn't dabbling in rocket science, id Software's John Carmack is one of the world authorities on 3D graphics programming. Carmack, who recently revealed that he is turning his talents to Apple's iPhone (the graphics ones, not the rocketry smarts) for a "graphical tour de force," has provided his two cents on just how powerful the ~~cell phone~~ personal media device really is.

During an on-stage appearance at QuakeCon 2008, the man who's tinkered with every graphics tech under the sun likened the polygon-pushing capabilities of iPhone to that of Sega's late, great Dreamcast. Taking the comparison to more current game hardware, he stated that iPhone is "more powerful than a Nintendo DS and Sony PSP combined," perhaps even nearing the capabilities of the PS2 and original Xbox. Given his statements, we're even more eager to see the two projects id is developing for the device, a "conventional mobile game" and the aforementioned visual show stopper.

[Via Engadget]

Source

Tags: id-software, iphone, john-carmack, quakecon-2008

Reader Comments (83)

How is that possible?

"more powerful than a Nintendo DS and Sony PSP combined [with duct tape]"

Hope that makes sense now.

Well, the PSP is 'almost as powerful as a PS2' and that thing is old.

10 bucks says Sony start's using the cell proccesor everywhere . First the PSPhone will have a quad-core cell . Then the Sony-Ericsonns will have them , then laptops , PC's EVERYTHING . (cell cammera's , cell GPS etc) ,

Yet it still can't post to Joystiq on a regular basis and runs slow as hell since the 2.0 revision came out. I call shenanigans.

I love how people try to point this out. What they don't realize is that a lot of the "power" goes towards the phone/online/email aspects of the iPhone and the data storage to hold contacts and whatnot.. I'll believe it when I see it

+1 your your bad-ass Dr. McNinja avatar.

Well, I hate the iPhone hype with a vengeance but John Carmack is one of the first and foremost experts of 3D graphics engines, and when he says something I tend to believe him. Now, he might be exaggerating but it's probably not too far from the truth. The processor's speed itself is much faster than the DS and a fair bit faster than the PSP, although I don't know what kind of dedicated graphics chip it's got. I'd guess it's probably closest to the PSP's graphics, but that's just me, a random internet commenter, guessing. Carmack's probably closer to the truth than you or I am.

Like when he said Doom3 would look as good on Xbox as PC ?

I tend to take his comments with a truck load of salt.

Again, like I posted on engadget, I would like to see an iphone run splinter cell 3.

Carmack needs to stop jerkin' off over horsepower and start making games that offer better gameplay.

Why when spitting out engines makes a bundle?

I guess, but him new Rage engine is lookin' more like the Unreal engine.

When the only goal of the two engines is to mimic reality as close as possible, they're eventually going to converge.

dude, that's like, deep n stuff

Nice points, LT. You nailed it.

How is the Doom 3 engine making bundles? Seems to me that almost no one's licensing the engine except those inhouse devs...

But can the RAGE engine even mimic reality better than UE3? I'm not seeing much of a difference... in fact I'd have to give a slight nod to Gears 2.

For fucks sake, he writes game engines. That is what he does, that is all he does, he has never claimed to do anything more than that.

He has never been anything but a programmer or a technical director. As ID has grown in size, his contribution to game play has decreased towards zero.

he doesnt make the games dipshit, he makes graphics/engines for the games. Grow a brain and tell me when you decide to use it.

If the iPhone is as strong as all those systems it still won't be able to half of what they could because of the lack of buttons. Apple should create some addon that has a d-pad and face buttons so that it can show off its graphics and have fun and deep games too.

Also, the batteries will die out in like 3 seconds on whatever dreamcast level ultra graphics game carmack is working on.

Agreed, the iPod has no decent input device other than the screen.

It'll get to to the title screen and the battery will die.

If the iphone is so graphically capable, why are people already complaining about frame rate drops in the games that have already come out?

That's the main problem for me. Without good, tactile input it is nothing to me (in a gaming sense.)

The iPhone can't even run 2 apps at the same time.

I surf the load up a webpage, my email all while listening to music on my iPhone. I don't know what device you are talking about.

Apple made so you couldn't run THIRD PART apps in the background because it would waste battery power.

Yet it still has a shitty battery life.

PS2 and Xbox1 are pretty far apart as far as graphics go, and both are significantly better than the Dreamcast.

Carmack's vague descriptions manages to mention 5 different gaming platforms, Which definitely hurts his credibility on the matter.

He says nothing about Graphics. He only talks about power.

though shalt not question Carmack!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but,

Dreamcast > PS2

Dreamcast sucked, biggest waste of my money ¬_¬

You must be talking about a different ps2 because the real one was never significantly better or even just better, graphically, than the dreamcast.

Sorry DC fanboys, PS2 was indeed better graphically than the Dreamcast.

Extinction, do some research. In a lot of fields, the PS2 has the upper hand, but same goes for the Dreamcast, and it can easily be argued that the Dreamcast is more powerful than the Playstation 2.

"Dreamcast sucked, biggest waste of my money".

*Does the Bob and Cedric look.

Who?!,Who doesn't loves the Dreamcast?!!

(WTF are you talking about? the dreamcast was f*cking awesome but if you don't want it you can sell it to me,I'll find a good use.The DC was great).

Nice but the interface for the Iphone is still horrible.

The touchscreen is nice but its not enough on its own for most real games.

I guess I'll raise the obvious...

Wii is a "no" but the iPhone is a "hell ya"?

Nintendo consoles are a no. For some reason they are anethema to iD.

uh, once again I have to estate the same, the iPhone is considered one of the most powerful devices when it comes to cellphones, can the same be said about the Wii on the videogame scene?

id has had a long history with Nintendo. Nintendo usually pissed them off on everything they tried to bring to their consoles. Wolfenstein, Doom, you name it. It actually started when id offered to port Super Mario Brothers III to the PC and Nintendo gave them more than just a "no".

The Iphone can't touch the Dreamcast.

Agreed! However, if the iPhone gets Skies of Arcadia AND Jet Grind Radio....

it still won't be close to Dreamcast. :P

If Skies of Arcadia was released on the iPhone I would cancel my current plan today and way what ever it takes to get that. That's one of the best RPGs ever!

Like others have said, the lack of buttons completely ruins the point of making games on it. SOME DS games can be ported to it but others won't work because of the thickness of a finger both not being precise and blocking the screen.

I like the idea of having a shell that the iphone slides into, that has conventional buttons on it. it could also hold some more battery power to take care of the huge ammount of power gaming on the iphone would suck up.

I saw someone playing a kart racing game on one today and the graphics were way better then a PSOne. A PS2 may be a bit of a stretch but I was impressed.

Hmm, I think I saw the same game (some Crash Team Racing offshoot) and it seemed like PS1 quality to me.

I like the way he says it's far more powerful than a PSP but "almost" as powerful as a PS2, when the PSP and PS2 are fairly close in power.

Spec wise, it looks like it's a bit more powerful than the PSP, but it has to run Apple's OS, and who knows how much that takes to run behind the scenes.

Plus, you know, no buttons.

The PSP is nowhere near as powerful as a PS2, the only reason that it looks like it is, is because of the tiny resolution that the PSP renders at. Get them both running at the same resolution and the PSP can't have nearly as much detail.

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id's Carmack: iPhone nearly as powerful as Xbox, PS2

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