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.
