Here's the run-down:
Also check out our E3 Interview with John Carmack
Next Doom May Not Be a True Sequel
Rage and id's Love/Hate Relationship with the PS3
id Would Like Another Doom Movie
id Considering Wolfenstein RPG, Doom 2 RPG for iPhone
Hollenshead: E3 Was Pretty Much a Disappointment to Everyone
Does PC Gaming Need a Savior?

But id CEO Todd Hollenshead, doesn't totally agree that they have switched sides, or that there even need to be sides for PC gaming to survive.

"That whole PC first thing, you have to go back in id history to see why id initially developed for the PC," he said.

It used to be, he said, that developers had to change so many things, jump through so many hoops, to get their games on consoles that it just wasn't worth it for some.

"Wolfenstein 3D, there was a Nintendo version of that, that was like a black day in id history, how they made us change it to run on the Nintendo platform," he said. Platform owners "wouldn’t let you publish games on the console. We didn’t want to have our content governed by a third-party."

"But that dynamic isn’t really like there anymore. There are lots of games that have content, whether it's language or other forms of adult content, that is pushing the bounds of content on all platforms."

With that hurdle gone, the decision comes down to one of economics, Hollenshead said.

"Our decision about multiplatform is dictated by the market," he said. "We need to have all of these coordinated and released at the same time because that's the way to get your game out to the most people."

And doing that, he says, also allows you to maintain quality control, making sure all of your versions are good.

In many ways, that was the impetus for id Tech 5, to be able to create top notch, quality games for all platforms at the same time.

"So there is no stepdown or dilution between platforms," he said.

But that doesn't mean that Hollenshead and id Software thinks PC gaming isn't important anymore.

"I think there are still some problems in the PC market," he said. "There are issues in the market from a business standpoint, which means having a PC only title that the level of investment to make a triple A game is a tough thing if your not doing a subscription model."

id actually thought about tinkering around with a subscription model for some of their games, but in the end realized it wasn't a good fit for what they create.

"To open that up for the type of games we make isn't really appealing to us," he said. "World of Warcraft I can understand that, they have a service based aspect to that game. With our games we have always been about the free multiplayer stuff."

Despite that, id still sees PC gaming as viable platform for games, even some exclusive games.

"Obviously Quake Live is only pc and we certainly hope we do well with that," he said. "We still feel PC is a very important market. "

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It's too early to tell if the shrinking E3 has helped bolster id's own id-centric annual show QuakeCon. Usually id Software waits until the Saturday of the show to get official attendance numbers.

But Hollenshead is already sure that QuakeCon is the right way to host a gaming conference.

"I think we struck a balance of being vendor supported and still being in touch with the gamers," he said. "We had over 6,000 hours of volunteer time, that's like the polar opposite of E3,. which is all about business."

In fact id Software only officially showed up at E3 as a single announcement during the Electronic Arts press conference. They were there to tell the world that EA would be publishing their upcoming id Tech 5 game, Rage.

And even that had to be modified to fit in with what E3 and its attendees expect from the show.

"We were told you can't show this stuff because of these five reasons," Hollenshead said. "Last night (during QuakeCon) we had the bigger, better, more hardcore, not suitable for investor conference (announcement) for Rage and Doom."

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"John is pretty disappointed we didn’t have the manpower and resources to have a game for the launch of the" app store, id CEO Todd Hollenshead said.

Hollenshead said that Carmack and other id folks had been playing around with the iPhone SDK for awhile, but that the developer's small in-house mobile team just didn't have the time to put together a game in time.

"It appears that at this point that given the size of our team, we can only work on one mobile game at a time. We are probably partner up and the first (iPhone game) will be one where we work with a publishing partner."

Already the team is working on both Wolfenstein RPG and Doom 2 RPG for mobile phones, both of which id Software would like to bring to the iPhone, Hollenshead said.

"We have ambitions to have both on the iPhone," he said, "but it's too early to say if that's going to happen at this point."

As much as id seems to like the idea of iPhone gaming, they're taking a caution approach, but not for the reasons you'd think.

"The iPhone is cool, and the n-Gage was a nerd device," Hollenshead said. "The iphone is a pretty damn awesome phone, it’s a great business device, it's one of the best portable mp3 player you can buy, it can play videos. There's a lot of reasons to have that device and it has the power to play games as well. It’s a cool device that you can play games on and they can be awesome games."

But, perhaps the iPhone is too good at all the things it does.

Games on the iPhone, Hollenshead explains, are "going to be competing with all of those other things you can do on the iPhone that are pretty cool, that’s the challenge."

"It does raise the bar on what you need to do from a game standpoint."

See, Carmack's initial attraction to mobile gaming was the fact that, well, most cell phone games are crap and most cell phones can't do more than a few things well.

"Doom RPG was a fun game you could play on your cell phone," he said. "With the iPhone the experience, what you are going to be doing in games, has to rise because there are so many other things you can do with it."

"Personally I'd like to do another Doom movie, I thought working with it was a blast," he said. "There are some lessons we learned. The best way to do things better is to get the experience."

Hollenshead said that Universal still has the rights for the Doom movie and sequels, so the ball is really in their court on whether another is made.

"We’ll see what happens when we get further along in development of the (new Doom) game and there's more buzz and we share more about what the game will be about.

"As the buzz meter starts to go up that may kind of kick start the guys over at Universal."

id's upcoming open-world shooter Rage, he told the assembled gamers, will look worse on the Xbox 360 because of storage issues.

I asked id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead about that this morning, now that the comment has had time to sink into gaming forums worldwide.

"That's a pretty gross over simplification," he said. And it was. In fact Carmack's and Hollenshead's views on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 as platforms are fairly complex. While Carmack has long said he thinks that the architecture of the Xbox 360 is better, it sounds like he and others at id Software feel that the PS3 has done a much better job of future proofing.

This issue with Rage? It's just the tip of the iceberg unless something is done.

The problem with Rage is two fold, Hollenshead tells me. First there is the economics of spreading a game across multiple discs. The more discs you use the higher production costs are.

"We have concerns (about the 360 version of Rage) because of the economics of the platform in terms of what it costs to go to multiple discs," Hollenshead said. "There is disc space issue on the 360, and if we cant find a clever way or compromise with Microsoft to address that issue... even though we feel the 360 has superior hardware, the size limitations may mean that we may not have as much texture density or resolution on the 360 version.

"Let me be clear, this is an open question, we have these tech issues and we are working with Microsoft to solve them."

And the issue isn't just about the game being too big, Hollenshead says that developers lose upwards of 2 gigs of space per a disc because of information Microsoft requires developers to put on the discs.

While allowing the game to be installed on the Xbox 360's harddrive may help, it actually wouldn't solve that problem, Hollenshead added.

While spit-balling ideas and possible solutions, Carmack even talked about the possibility of streaming some game data to Xbox 360s through the Live service, but that raises a litany of other issues, like how you would ensure that all of your gamers had a harddrive or broadband connections.

Ironically, early on Carmack was pretty clear on the fact that he felt the Playstation 3's cell technology was not the boon it was made out to be to developers.

"I know that John is pretty much brass tacks on these issues and before the PS3 was ever released he raised the same issues then as now," Hollenshead said. Sony "had a bunch of hardware engineers talking about theoretical power, but (Carmack) said 'yeah, this isn’t how software people work' and they said 'yeah, this is how they should work.'"

To date, Carmack still feels the architecture of the Playstation 3 doesn't deliver the power promised. But Hollenshead points out that there's no use crying over spilled milk.

"Complaining about that is sort of a worthless exercise at this point," he said. "The PS3 is what it is and it’s not going to change. You have to adapt. That’s what we have done with id tech 5."

One of the promises of id Software's new engine is that it will make cross-platform development a breeze. Something Hollenshead said is proven with Rage.

"Today we are saying that Rage may look better on the PS3 than the 360," he pointed out.

While id may not be fans of the Playstation 3's architecture, they are fans of how future proof the console seems to be.

"I think the blu-ray strategy and some of the other things they’ve done in terms how (the PS3) is positioned as a home entertainment device, shows that (Sony) is placing their bet on the PS3 as a marathon runner not a sprint and Microsoft was a little more focused on the short term goals."

Storage, and Microsoft's early insistence that the Xbox 360 wasn't going to run into issues with its DVD-based games, is a key win for Sony, he said.

"As soon as you start saying you have enough memory, you better hide and watch brother."

"The next game in the Doom universe is in development," id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead told me earlier today. " We do have the core of the team working on it, under the direction of Kevin Cloud.

"We are working on what the story is going to be for the game right now, the logo (shown during QuakeCon) didn’t have a four or a subtitle. We haven’t made the decision about that yet. There is probably a let's not make a numeral game and some say we should make it one."

While there isn't a lot to tell yet about the upcoming Doom game, Hollenshead told me everything he was able.

The game will be built on the id Tech 5 and will remain true to it's roots, he said.

"There's going to be big guns, lots of blood and demons," Hollenshead said. "That’s what we see as the core and that’s what that game is about.

While Hollenshead said the development team definitely want to innovate with the game, it's too early to tell how exactly that will be done.

"We are still working on the game and what it’s going to be about," he said. "The goal for the game is that it will be the best game of its ilk when it's released.

"It will remain true to what Doom is about, this very visceral experience. But we still want to obviously be innovative within that."

Check back for the rest of our Hollenshead interview throughout the day.

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This year will include a chance to win a Corvette, Brawl chugging, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars tournaments, Guitar Hero contests and plenty more. The convention will give gamers a chance to check out id's new browser-based Quake Live, watch pro-gaming documentary FRAG and play a bit of tourney poker.

The highlight for the show for us non-attendees though will be John Carmack's keynote during the id press conference Thursday morning. Here's hoping we hear more about id Tech 5.

Don't worry, we've already got an interview set up and are plugged into whatever announcements maybe coming. In the meantime check out our interview with Carmack and company earlier this month to hear him talking about his new game engine, new publisher and the future of PC and Apple gaming.

QuakeCon