It's the Xbox 360's fault. This is what Tim Willits has revealed at a discussion at the Austin Game Developers Conference, talking about the development of Rage's (PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360) story, and why they had to make across the board cuts on the game's feature.

We know that some of you got pretty excited when we mentioned that Doom 4 was announced back in May. That said, id's Todd Hollenshead and John Carmack recently revealed some new information on Doom 4. It's not a lot of info, but we like what they're saying, at the very least. More after the jump!

At id Software's QuakeCon, John Carmack stole the show with a rather perplexing announcement: the iconic programmer predicted that the Xbox 360 version of their upcoming shooter Rage will look worse than the PC, PlayStation 3 and Mac versions. Find out why in the full article up next.

Whether it's Turkey Day or Christmas, we feel the need to thank the greatest figures in video game history for their contributions that made gaming as fun as it is today. For decades, we've seen creative minds emerge and bring forward games that amaze the world, but they don't get much recognition. But now, we have enough time to list down some of the greatest geniuses behind phenomenal landmarks like Mario, Wolfenstein 3D, and even The Sims.

A lot of heat is on id Software's latest title after the revelation at QuakeCon 2007, and we know what eye-candy lovers and high-end machines are on about. We're not sure how much of a racer-FPS mix Rage will be, but the engine behind it is 100% beef. We can't help but be amazed as John Carmack gave everyone a skinny on what Tech 5 has to offer.

It's almost undeniable that Rage looks insane, and we can give Tech 5 credit for that. In this video, Carmack demonstrates the engine's rendering capabilities. What we get is an environment made up of 80GB worth of uncompressed textures. Through some smart coding and Carmack's genius, the game should fit a single Blu-ray or 2 DVDs.

Developing for multiple platforms always posed technical challenges, but id may have found the groundbreaking solution. As shown in the videos, Rage is running on PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and Mac. According to Carmack, the Tech 5 engine takes away most problems multi-platform games encounter during development.

There are more reasons why Tech 5 may give Unreal Engine 3 a run for the money, so here's Carmack presenting id's new baby.

Part 2 after the jump!

Imagine Unreal Tournament populated with single or multi-manned vehicles, each contraption upgradeable with spoils of battle earned with every battle, race, or both. Twisted Metal meets Unreal Tournament 3? Perhaps. But reports coming in from the on-going QuakeCon 2007 were sure that id Software's John Carmack identified the game as Rage - a new (possibly multi-platform) game demonstrating id's new Tech 5 engine.

 

Now details are currently very scarce, as the presentation by Carmack was all about Tech 5, but a visual demonstration pitting what appeared to be similar to Unreal Tournament 2004's Scorpion assault buggy against other similar multi-manned vehicles played into many a speculative imagination - including the fact that it (just might) be available to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gamers, aside from Mac and PC gamers worldwide.

More information seems to be on the way as the prominent PC LAN fest continues toward August 5 - the anticipation culminating somewhere in-between when Carmack finally renders his keynote. But all that has been preempted with a short description regarding the "content" demonstrated with Tech 5. Rage was painted as a half running and shooting, half driving and destruction racing game, every aspect apparently focused on arcade action, team-play, and closed-track racing circuits.

According to IGN, the visuals were notably impressive. The demonstration touted the engine's graphical capabilities together with completely diverse detail emphasized, as the looped video coursed through the game's racing arena. More on this as the news whacks us back to Timbuktu. Keep your eyes glued to this space, folks!

John Carmack, id Software co-founder and technical director, was unveiled as a surprise guest during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote at this year's Worldwide Developers' Conference. While that may not be big news in and of itself to most readers, what Carmack brought to the keynote is.

   

According to Engadget, Carmack gave audiences at WWDC07 a first look at Tech 5, id Software's new game engine. Details about the engine are still scarce, but Carmack did give audiences a peek at some of the features that come packed with Tech 5.

What we've got here is the entire world with unique textures, 20GB of textures covering this track. They can go in and look at the world and, say, change the color of the mountaintop, or carve their name into the rock. They can change as much as they want on surfaces with no impact on the game.

More details about Tech 5 are expected to surface come E3. Carmack also noted that the engine was being geared towards the Mac, PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 gaming platforms. Yes, the Mac. Carmack also revealed that another announcement involving the Mac would be made at E3.

In a recent interview with Game Informer, id Software's John Carmack gave word that they will not be using DirectX 10 for the upcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for the Xbox 360, PC, PS3, and Mac.

According to Carmack, so far there is no "massive pull" for him for DX10 and it all depends on how widely adopted Vista will become.

Microsoft's Director of Games for Windows Rich Wickham has responded to this and to the people who have been pointing out that Microsoft's DirectX 10 is not gaining as much acceptance among game developers.

"What I believe Mr. Carmack said was that he did not currently see a compelling reason to develop on DirectX 10...," said Wickham. "We obviously work with id, and a lot of id’s progeny." He also added that he would be "shocked and amazed if id doesn't build a DirectX 10 title some day" and that he suspects that it will be "sooner rather than later."

Those are pretty strong and confident words from Wickham regarding their product. Whether his predictions come true or not remain to be seen. Be sure to keep checking back here for more updates on the gaming scene.

Game Informer interviewed id Software's John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead about the QuakeCon, the state of PC Gaming, and the pros and cons of developing for the PS3 and the Xbox 360. The interview gets a bit lengthy so we'll just relay to you folks the juicy bits, and if you're interested about further details, you can make use of our source-link below.

Here's John Carmack on developing for the Xbox 360:

Microsoft has made some pretty nice tools that show you what you can make on the Xbox 360. I get a nice multi-frame graph, and I can label everything across six threads and three cores. They are nice tools for doing all of that, but the fundamental problem is that it’s still hard to do. If you want to utilize all of that unused performance, it’s going to become more of a risk to you and bring pain and suffering to the programming side. It already tends to be a long pole in the tent for getting a game out of the door. It’s no help to developers to be adding all of this extra stuff where we can spend more effort on this.

His thoughts on developing for the PS3 await after the jump!