id expecting to sign Doom 4 deal 'later this year,' publisher unknown

While id Software recently partnered with EA's increasingly popular publishing imprint EA Partners for the upcoming Rage, John Carmack said that no such deal has been reached for the studio's other major project, the recently announced Doom 4. "Nobody's signed Doom yet," Carmack told Joystiq, "so Doom 4 will be the same process of going out and bringing [publishers] around." By that point, id will have "some scope of how the dealings of EA will have gone" and they'll "be able to get a better sense of how we think their doing, holding up their side of the bargain."

And when will that be? "We're taking Doom like we did with Rage, quite a way on our internal development funds," Carmack revealed. "It winds up getting us a better deal with the publishers who sign it but we do expect to be signing Doom deals later this year." So, in other words, after beating out other publishers on paper – including Activision, THQ, and Sega – to get the publishing rights for Rage, it's up to EA Partners to actually perform if they want a slice of that Doom 4 pie. With games like Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Left 4 Dead, Orange Box, Crysis, and unreleased games like Brütal Legend, and the as-yet-unnamed Epic / People Can Fly and Shinji Mikami / Suda51 games we think EA aims to please.

Check back later today for our full interview with id's John Carmack and Marty Stratton.