John Carmack Likes iPhone Better Than PSP or DS

About's Guide to Mobile Gaming, Damon Brown, just posted a great interview with John Carmack of id Software, legendary for creating the first-person-shooter genre almost single-handedly with Wolfenstein 3D. Among the questions Damon asked was why id Software hadn't developed for the PSP or DS. Carmack answered,

Actually, we got the SDKs and the hardware specs, but we never got around to producing.

It seems that John Carmack thinks handheld games systems are on the way on in favor of gadgets that do many things, like the iPhone:

My guess is that dedicated game systems won't be here much longer - we'll have devices not committed just to gaming. We're not there yet, as the dedicated game machines still have the better specs, but it will be easier to make the iPhone and similar devices into a cool gaming machine than it would be to, say, turn the PSP into a phone.

It's interesting to think about. After all, many high-tech items do seem to be going to multifunction way. On the other hand, the old wisdom about devices that can do many things, but do none of them particularly well (or as well as a standalone device) still seems to hold. Sure, there are always people who will buy the tv with the video player built in, or the printer that also scans, photocopies and faxes, but the true television junkie knows that if you buy your tv and your player separately, you're going to get better hardware, and a graphic designer will probably choose a scanner and printer specific to their needs, and not whatever comes built in to a multifunction machine.

Now, I'm not saying the iPhone sucks in comparison to the PSP. I have both (and a DS, too), and I love them all, but for different things. Yes, I play games on my iPhone, but I play casual games, and puzzle games, and the occasional graphical adventure. For serious handheld gaming, I play on my PSP. Despite the About team's 5 reasons you should buy one handheld over another articles (PSP here and DS here), I think most of us agree that the different handhelds (and consoles, too) have different strengths and play very different kinds of games. Choose one based on your gaming preferences, or choose them all if you want to play everything.

Anyway, read Damon's interview with John Carmack for more on id Software's iPhone development. (The PSP stuff is one page 2, if you want to skip to it.)