More info on id-ZeniMax merger

Posted Jun 25th 2009 10:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz, FPS, Multiplayer, Rage

The fallout (pun intended) from Wednesday's news of id Software being acquired by ZeniMax Media is still being felt and today our sister site Joystiq and other media outlets got to speak with id co-founder John Carmack and the other principles involved. Here's a quickie summary of the important bits:

Joystiq asked about the possibility of the id Tech 5 graphics engine being used in other games that are being developed by ZeniMax Media. It's CEO Robert Altman said, "We'll certainly take advantage of the expertise and brain of John Carmack throughout the organization. Specifically, what we will do with the technology, the id tech engine, and the proprietary technology that's been developed here, is to be discussed. We haven't determined how we are going to handle that proprietary technology, going forward. So, it's just one of the agenda items for us as we integrate these organizations."

Joystiq also asked about this year's QuakeCon and if there would be any involvement by ZeniMax. Carmack stated, "They are fully behind QuakeCon. It's going on as usual this year and I do expect them to go ahead and have some presence down there. I think everybody's going to be psyched about that and that should just work out great for everyone."
Industrygamers asked about any previous offers to buy id before ZeniMax. Carmack stated, "Throughout our entire history, we've had an endless stream of buyout offers, none of which we followed up on for a variety of reasons. We did have a long term plan for expanding out, but the ZeniMax deal came a long and we decided this is what we wanted to do to boost our plan in the short term." He added that the deal will allow id to expand from two to three full development teams in-house.
Finally G4TV.com got Carmack to confess that the upcoming Wolfenstein game (due out in early August) might not get the attention from its publisher Activision as a result of the ZeniMax deal. He states, "Obviously, we hope that Wolfenstein gets a good push coming out but the reality of the situation here is that Activision is not going to be as thrilled about Wolfenstein to the maximum now as they would have been previously, but we still hope that doesn't wind up botching the release of it one way or another."

Tags: bethesda-softworks, id, id-software, id-tech-5, john-carmack, quakecon, wolfenstein, zenimax-media

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=punsPosted at 10:36PM on Jun 25th 2009 by Clyde Cash

MY GOD will they just say if they still have full control over their engines (ie, can release them open source) or will they be horrible proprietary junk. id is dead if it goes proprietary.Posted at 1:00AM on Jun 26th 2009 by Sam