John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace is investing in what it calls the "Fishbowl Spaceship" - an orbital bubble designed to let space tourists roll around in freefall like.. well, goldfish. Space goldfish.

Yes, it does look crazy and is probably designed purely to distract from Carmack's real goal of building a portal to hell in the caverns of Mars. Armadillo hopes to have a prototype in orbit by the end of next year, with manned flights in 2010 at a low, low price of $100,000.

Fishbowl Spaceship to give tourists a breathtaking 360-degree view [Dvice.com]

The Wii is one of those markets where Nintendo owns both the hardware and the software, but part of that is because they make such damn good products. So it’s the toughest platform for third party developers. We don’t have a software or content base ideally suited for it. So it doesn’t really play to our strengths and we’re pretty busy with other stuff right now. I’m thrilled that Nintendo has had this kind of success because they took some risky bets, and it’s always nice some bold thinking pay off for them. But I don’t think we’ll be on the platform.

At least he's honest!

Carmack on Doom, Rage, EA and More [Tom's Games via Go Nintendo]

The truth is Steve Jobs doesn’t care about games. 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 a while 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. 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.

That doesn't mean that Carmack is down on the iPhone or anything as a gaming platform, he just doesn't think gaming is priority numero uno for Jobs. So there you have it. John Carmack thinks Steve Jobs isn't a gamer. Who doesn't agree with that?

"Steve Jobs doesn't care about games" [Eurogamer via VG247] [Pic]

During the opening address of QuakeCon earlier today, John Carmack wasn't just happy he was wearing his best pair of on-stage shorts. He was also happy with this new Rage trailer, finally answering our months-long pondering as to what Motorstorm would look like if it had less driving, more shooting in a post-apocalyptic desert setting.

Maximum PC also reports that the Xbox 360 version of Rage may wind up shipping on up to three DVDs — or suffer some serious compression compared to the Blu-ray version — a move that could cost millions in per-disc royalty fees. And think of the paper sleeve costs!

QuakeCon 08: No Digital Distribution for Rage or Doom 4; Rage will be on Multiple DVDs for Xbox 360 [Maximum PC]

"The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market," he says. We're sure John can knock up a solid Doom 3 engine over the weekend if need be.

An App Store For iPhone [slashdot via GameSpot]

Development of Massively Multiplayer Online Graphical Role Playing Games:
- Sony Online Entertainment, EverQuest, Laura Naviaux
- Blizzard, World of Warcraft, Mike Morhaime
- AOL/Time Warner, Neverwinter Nights, Don Daglow

User Generated Content/Game Modification:
-EA, Pinball Construction, Bill Budge
-Id Software, Quake, John Carmack
-Linden Labs, Second Life, Philip Rosedale

That Carmack is a regular Emmy hog, isn't he?

You know, there's not that much that I would care to ask of the PC vendors, and so on. The interfaces we're working with are pretty good, and stability's pretty good on there. There's a lot less to talk about...for the most part, things work as you'd expect right now. So to some degree, the lack of excitement is a sign of the maturing of the industry and the tech base that we work on.

It was probably the most fun platform that I have personally worked on. The early consoles that I worked on (SNES, Genesis-32X, and Jaguar) had fun hardware and full documentation, but a lousy development tool chain... While there are a few nooks on the DS that aren't documented, they weren't things I cared about, so to me it was almost perfect. It is a shame that homebrew development can't be officially sanctioned and supported, because it would be a wonderful platform for a modern generation of programmers to be able to get a real feel for low level design work...

Don't worry, no one was hurt, including Carmack. He'll still be able to put his typing skills to good use for id's upcoming Rage. You can read all about the harrowing, explosive experience at the official X PRIZE site.

Armadillo Aerospace Nearly Wins Northrop Grumman [X-Prize Foundation]

The really funny thing is, for our honeymoon we had to ship two computers to the hotel so that he could work! It's one of the endearing parts about it. He can't be without his computer, because he just loves to code, so he must code every single day!

We were on vacation in Hawaii, and that's where he wrote it. I think it was over the weekend, because we usually don't leave too long. It was like, a four-day extended weekend — we left Friday and came back on Tuesday, or something, and in that weekend, he had done the engine for Doom RPG. He was like, 'here's the engine, go for it!'

John had actually thought about PSP initially, and then sort of started getting more interested in the DS — and that's not a knock on the PSP, it's just there were some interesting gameplay options for Orcs & Elves with the DS.

The PSP is definitely something we've thought about, but as far as Sony's Network - we've nothing against the network or anything, we just haven't had those discussions internally. We'd love to talk to Sony and find out...we've talked to them a little bit, but we'd love to find out more specifically to look at our games and see what makes sense. We haven't talked to them in depth about options, but you shouldn't be surprised if we do something with them.

I don't spend much time looking at Epic's current offering or what their product line is — we've always just done our own thing at id, so we don't spend too much time thinking about them...

We have the PS3, the 360, the PC and the Mac all running at a very high frame-rate - basically all running at 60fps right now - and what's really unique is that when an artist builds an asset they don't know what they're building it for. They build the exact same model, the exact same level, and it doesn't matter what platform they're putting it on. That's a huge breakthrough. A lot of times you'd have your PS3-optimized assets, your Xbox-optimized assets, your PC-optimized assets, and at the end of the project you'd do this ugly Mac port. If not an ugly PC port. We think that the fact developers can cleanly simultaneously develop all four platforms is a huge change.

Expect to hear some news in just a few from the QuakeCon Keynote. id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead and technical director and co-founder John Carmack will be taking the stage for the back-to-back press conference and keynote address.

"We look forward to QuakeCon every year as an opportunity to have a great time partying and playing id games with our fans," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software. "QuakeCon's continuing popularity is a credit to the dedication of our volunteers and grass-roots support of sponsors and exhibitors; and the fans' enthusiastic and passionate response to our big announcements is inspiring."

Check back to read the news and our interview with Hollenshead.

EA ANNOUNCES ID SOFTWARE'S AWARD-WINNING ORCS & ELVES SERIES TO CONTINUE ON NINTENDO DS AND MOBILE

LOS ANGELES - July 11, 2007 - Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced the upcoming release of the award-winning* title Orcs & Elves® to the Nintendo DS™ and the second installment in the action-fantasy saga, Orcs & Elves II, coming to mobile. Orcs & Elves and Orcs & Elves II are first-person fantasy role playing games created by id™ Software and developed exclusively for EA by Fountainhead Entertainment. Orcs & Elves marks one of the first games developed specifically for the mobile platform that has crossed over to another game-specific device.

The Orcs & Elves franchise has been lauded for marrying the storytelling and visuals of the fantasy RPG genre with the accessibility of the mobile format, which has appealed to casual and hardcore gamers alike. The game won numerous awards including IGN's Best of E3 2006 and Mobile Game of the Year at the 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

"Orcs & Elves was a perfect fit for the DS," said John Carmack, founder and technical director at id Software, "We were able to take excellent advantage of the 3D hardware and unique user input capabilities, and expand the game to include a lot of wonderful features that we just couldn't fit on the cell phones. Orcs & Elves II is a polished gem of a game for the mobile platforms, opening up new parts of the world to explore, while carrying forward and improving all the elements that were loved about the original game."

"Orcs & Elves changed a lot of people's perceptions by showing that you could build an easily accessible, story-rich RPG for today's mobile phones," said Travis Boatman, vice president of worldwide studios for EA Mobile™.

id Software has crafted an entirely new version of Orcs & Elves that utilizes the Nintendo DS unique technology platform. Orcs & Elves will feature higher graphical fidelity, more levels, items and monsters as players explore a massive Dwarven kingdom riddled with ancient treasures and fierce enemies. The game features hybrid gameplay, combining the best of first-person action and fast-paced tactical RPG gameplay.

"With the franchise expanding to the popular DS platform, we're reaching a real milestone in handheld gaming," said David DeMartini, vice president and global GM of EA Partners

Orcs & Elves II for mobile continues the epic story from the original game and expands the Orcs & Elves universe. In Orcs & Elves II, evil begins to spread throughout the lands after the fall of King Brahm at Mount Zharrkarag. As a novice thief who has stolen the legendary wand Ellon, players must travel through towns and forests while trying to convince the Wand to be helpful. With a new mouse companion, Ellon's help, and a lot of luck, Valin must return to his under siege town before it's too late. Players will encounter new creatures, allies and villains as they explore seven huge interactive environments including towns, collapsing caverns and haunted forests.

Orcs & Elves II for mobile and Orcs & Elves for the Nintendo DS is scheduled to be available for the upcoming holiday season.

*Orcs & Elves won 'Best RPG - Wireless Best of E3 2006 Award' - IGN; 'Best Mobile Game' at the 2006 Leipzig Games Convention and 'Mobile Game of the Year' at the 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in Las Vegas in February 2007.

GameTrailers just threw up this video from Steve Job's keynote yesterday showing John Carmack's demonstration of the new id Tech 5 game engine. Looks pretty amazing, though is it just me or did that outdoor area look an awful lot like a Motorstorm track? Brian Crecente

John Carmack is working on a new franchise that will use a brand new engine crafted by the developer, according to Id Software's Todd Hollenshead.

"We are working on an all-new franchise: it's not Doom, it's not Quake, it's not Wolfenstein, it's not Enemy Territory, it's not even Commander Keen!

"It is a new id brand with an all-new John Carmack engine and I think that when we show it to people, once again they'll see, just like they saw when we first showed Doom 3, that John Carmack still has a lot of magic left."

"Our first task at id is as a single studio developer," Hollenshead continued. "That's really where everything spawns from. Because John Carmack is a programming genius, who in my opinion is unequalled in video games today, he makes a great technology that we can use across a wide range of applications and different games within our suite of franchises.

"The new stuff that we're working on does have a brand new engine that John has been working on, actually is still working on today. We can't really talk any details about it; we'll see about when the timing is right for an announcement. We like to be able to talk about stuff that we can show at the same time and it's not really ready to show yet."

Hmmm, maybe some news will come out of tiny E3 afterall? Brian Crecente

As far as geek gods go, John Carmack is right up there. Not only has he programmed games like DOOM and Quake, but he's also into engineering rockets. Real rockets. So when NASA announced that it will be developing a 3 million dollar MMO for the youth, game site GigaGamez sent Carmack an email. His response?

..the end result will probably be a turkey (a MMOG focusing on formal education... sounds thrilling!)

[I] do support efforts to enhance math/science/engineering education, and I could imagine something interesting coming out of it if they were willing to focus on game-like scenario and actions, rather than trying to be some sort of generic Second Life sort of environment.

Yes, no furries doing it in zero-G. 'Kay, thanks. Still, shouldn't NASA be doing other stuff? Like space stuff? Budget cuts might have push the MMO back, thankfully. Brian Ashcraft

Carmack Gives NASA Advice [GigaGamez via Alice]

This week's quote-machine John Carmack has already voiced his opinion on the PS3 and Nintendo. And he doesn't stop there. Oh, no, in that long Game Informer sitdown, Carmack dishes up his feelings on Microsoft's Vista, saying:

Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren't any for Vista... They're really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it.

That sure's blunt. Can't wait for Carmack impressions on the iPhone, cold feet and moldy oranges! Brian Ashcraft

Vista... Meh [Games Industry]

PS3 or Xbox 360? Quickly, which do you like? John Carmack (creator of Doom, Quake ) has been "pulling" for Microsoft. While he likes the PS3 better than the PS2 and doesn't think the new console is ugly, Carmack just isn't crazy about the PS3 dev tools. He says:

But the honest truth is that Microsoft dev tools are so much better than Sony's. We expect to keep in mind the issues of bringing this up on the PlayStation 3... they're not helpful to the developers... I suspect they're not going to overwhelmingly crush the marketplace this time, which wasn't clear a year ago. A lot of people were thinking it's going to be a rerun of the last generation, and it's now looking like it might not be. I've been pulling for Microsoft, because I think they've done a better job for development support, and I think they have made somewhat smarter decisions on the platform. It's not like the PlayStation 3 is a piece of junk or anything. I was not a fan of the PlayStation 2 and the way its architecture was set up. With the PlayStation 3, it's not even that it's ugly—they just took a design decision that wasn't the best from a development standpoint.

And just look at that pooh face he makes while talking about the PS3! Brian Ashcraft

Carmack On PS3 Dev [Game Informer via 1Up]

The best part? It's FREE! It's always free—minus travel expenses, hotel room, parking, food and requisite PC upgrades, that is. Check out the official site for more info and get your room reservations in early.

Hopefully, we'll be in attendance, as we're suckers for those John Carmack keynotes. They're riveting! Michael McWhertor

It's beginning to look a lot like...QUAKECON 2007!

Unfortunately, Gawd's Museum of Dissected Games doesn't cover bad games. It doesn't have a 'What Went Wrong' section. But it's a fascinating third-party resource of postmortems about some of our favorite retro games. Gawd, a developer himself, hacks apart old games in his spare time and writes what makes them tick. It's a new site, so the only postmortem available is Carmack & Romero's Dangerous Dave 2 but it's a fascinating, if slightly technical, read into a game many of us old schoolers have loved and forgotten. And check out those awesome Dave death animations!

We hope someone will follow this up with a spoof site, 'The Museum of Dissected Gamers'. There's a couple Kotaku commenters Eliza and I would like to submit. Florian Eckhardt

Gawd's Museum of Dissected Games

But perhaps we should qualify that: while id software certainly has no innovative ideas for the future of gameplay, id founder John Carmack himself has been spending a great deal of time fixating on mobile phone gaming lately, and he's got some interesting ideas on where he'd like to see it headed. Ideas that Carmack spilled in an interview with CNN Money.

His big idea is an id produced MMORPG for cell phones. Although Carmack is quick to point out that he doesn't have any interest in bring id head to head with Blizzard, he does hint that a successful cell phone MMORPG could make an excellent bridge into the PC market. Which is a great idea: an MMORPG with a smaller, less advanced cell phone client for when you're shopping or sitting in traffic or pacing the maternity ward. - Florian Eckhardt

Creator of 'Doom' has a 'sneaky little plan' [CNN Money]

Don't you just want to beat G4's host with a sack of oranges into a giant oozing bruise? Just shut up already, you idiot. No one cares what you have to say: we want to hear Carmack on the PS3!

Summary: Carmack says the PS3 is technically a more powerful rig than the 360, but that power is off-set by being a pain in the ass to program for. Which might explain why the PS3 games on show at E3 looked no better than the 360 games being developed one year in to the game's life cycle.

One of the interesting things about mobile games is that the sales curve is not at all like the drastically front loaded curve of a PC or console game. DoomRPG is selling better now than when it was initially released, and the numbers are promising for supporting additional development work. However, unless I am pleasantly surprised, the hardware capabilities are going to advance much faster than the market in the next couple years, leading to an unusual situation where you can only afford to develop fairly crude games on incredibly powerful hardware. Perhaps "elegantly simple" would be the better way of looking at it, but it will still wind up being like developing an Xbox title for $500,000. That will wind up being great for many small game companies that just want to explore an idea, but having resource far in excess of your demands does minimize the value of being a hot shot programmer. :-)

You know, it's sort of refreshing to read Carmack's musings when he hasn't rolled his eyes into the back of his head and channeled a tenth-dimensional entity to converse entirely in quadratic equation.

Orcs & Elves [John Carmack's Blog]

There's some interested tidbits here, but we were most interested by his response to John Carmack's claim that programming for the PS3 is "a pain in the ass:"

I think whenever you have competing platforms. There are people who really like one platform vs. the other. I'm not sure I agree with...he didn't give me very many reasons why he feels that way. I got the impression that he's just someone who likes PCs more.

We dunno, man. Given that it is common knowledge that the PS2 is a nightmare to develop for compared to the XBox, it doesn't seem hard to believe that the same is true for the PS3. When Carmack talks, gamers and programmers listen: the guy is practically a giant Unicron-sized brain floating in outer space. We guess we'll have to wait and see, but Carmack's analysis tends to be spot on more often than not.

Cell Designer Talks PS3 [Next Generation]

So you can imagine our consternation when we discovered that Next Generation's article really ought to be titled "Homoeroticism's Top 100 Hot Developers." There's not a chick on the list! Worse yet, it's filled with pictures of pasty dorks like John Carmack and hirsute yetis like Raph Koster! Although I suppose we can all be thankful none of them deigned to pose in a bikini.

According to Next Gen, this was their judging criterion:

We selected the Hot 100, based primarily on their studio s market success in 2005. In addition, we kept in mind any potential huge successes for 2006, as well as people who are clearly industry luminaries regardless of their recent or upcoming projects.

Boo, Next Generation. Boo!

The 100 Hottest Game Developers [Next Generation]

Carmack, Meier, Lara make the Walk of Game [Gamespot]
Walk of Game Official Site

PC Gamer UK caught up with John Carmack recently to talk PC versus console development.

Funny enough, I just spoke with Tim Willits, id's creative director, about the very same thing for a piece I'm working on for the Rocky.

For the most part we didn t talk about Carmack, but at one point in the interview Willits mentioned how strange it was to walk by Carmack's office and see an Xbox 360 sitting on his desk and a controller sitting in his hand. He says Carmack loves the console.

That is echoed in the PC Gamer interview as well:

"The Xbox 360 will probably will be id's primary development platform. As it is right now, we would get the game up on the 360. When I would do major hack-and-slash architectural changes it was back on the PC, but it s looking like the Xbox 360 will be our target. All of our tools are on the PC, and we re maintaining the game running on the PC, but probably all of our gameplay development and testing will be done on the Xbox 360. It s a really sweet development system."

PC gamers should put their minds at ease, though; Willits said there's no way id would ever stop developing for the PC.

John Carmack Talks Graphics [Next Generation]