John Carmack’s keynote at Quake-Con was marked with skepticism about both Valve’s Linux aspirations, and the future of Windows.
Mr. Carmack, lead programmer and co-founder of id Software, identified the biggest problem with gaming on Linux is the user — they don’t want to pay for games. While Linux support creates goodwill amongst the open-source idolatrous, iD software hasn’t seen the return on investment in Linux gaming it requires to seriously pursue the platform.
“It’s great that people are enthusiastic about it, but there’s just not nearly as many people that are interested in paying for a game on the [Linux] platform and that just seems to be the reality,” said Mr. Carmack to conference attendees.
While iD isn’t interested in pursuing Linux like Valve, Mr. Carmack told attendees that he is impressed with Mac’s development as a gaming platform citing the inclusion of the latest Intel processors into the ecosystem.
While Mr. Carmack doesn’t agree with Valve’s Gabe Newell on Linux, they seem to be on the same page on the topic of Windows 8: Mr. Carmack doesn’t believe there is a reason to upgrade to the new OS.
“Windows XP did everything we needed for quite a while,” he said adding, “hardly anyone at iD used Vista”.
Watch the keynote here:
