While id Software was pretty adamant previously that Wii doesn’t have the graphics technology they are looking for and that the Xbox 360 and PS3 do have. An GD interview with Steve Nix, Director of Business Development for id Software, reveals he thinks the Wii is fantastic and that some id Software brands could be brought to the console. To quote:
“I think it’s great that Nintendo did something really unique with the control system. They’ve made it really more mass market friendly. Mouse and keyboard combinations or controllers can be baffling for people who haven’t played games since the Atari 2600. So I think what they did, the more intuitive they can make games for that system, that my mom can pick up and get into in 5 or 6 minutes, that’s fantastic and it’s necessary in growing the market.
But where we’re at, since id’s always been about taking revolutionary steps in graphics technology, the Wii’s really not a great platform for that part of our strategy because there’s just not a lot of horsepower there. We’ve looked at what would make sense, some of our older technology, to get up and going on the Wii, because people have expressed interest in licensing tech from us that would be for Wii games, so we’re still figuring out how we can do that. Some of our brands could end up on the Wii. But our new stuff, the next-generation stuff we’re doing, there’s no way that it could run effectively on the Wii.
When asked which of their older game series (Quake, Doom, etc.) could make it over to the Wii, he said:
“Or maybe some of our brands. We have a bunch of brands and maybe we’ll look at partnering with somebody with some of our older technology that really would push the limits of the Wii and look at our brands and which are appropriate.
See which makes sense, and this version of our technology would look better than any other Wii game out there. We would modify it to make sure things made sense and add things in where possible, because the Wii is a fairly new graphics card, even if it’s no a very powerful machine. So there are things we could do to make it look great.”
While he seems to be talking about porting their older games over to Wii with improved graphics and added Wii remote controls. I can’t help but think new games in id’s Commander Keen, Hexen or Wolfenstein 3D series would be fun. But this gives hope to FPS fans.