id Software's Steve Nix

Not really. The main thing is I think texture memory, and the shift there. But at the same time, clearly we talk to graphics card manufacturers about several generations beyond where they're at right now, and clearly with what John would like to do with virtualised polygons, that's something where obviously there's going to be discussions with the GPU manufacturers if there's enhancements and things they should be doing in the hardware to support that effort.

There's still plenty of stuff that we have that we're thinking about. John even alluded to some things that we are sort of thinking about - a Quake Arena product for the DS, for example. Those other products, like Quake Zero, those are all things that are obviously really happening, but some of those things he just alluded to are top-of-mind things that we might take on next. And he already said kind of what we're thinking with id Tech 6. So the things that are really happening, I'd say they're all out in the open right now. But the things we're just thinking about, we've already alluded to a few of them.

It's actually funny - I've actually heard that another technology licensor has hinted to potentially licensees that John's getting out of the business and everything. None of us have those discussions with John, but the fact we're already talking about id Tech 6 and Orcs & Elves on the Wii and all these things...I don't see a person who's not enthusiastic. I mean, he seemed pretty enthusiastic to me, and doesn't look like a guy who's going anywhere any time soon.

We've still got some time on Rage, and id Tech 6 is going to take a little while to go. Everyone seems excited and happy about what they're doing, so that's not something any of us are concerned about.

John had actually thought about PSP initially, and then sort of started getting more interested in the DS - and that's not a knock on the PSP, it's just there were some interesting gameplay options for Orcs & Elves with the DS.

The PSP is definitely something we've thought about, but as far as Sony's Network - we've nothing against the network or anything, we just haven't had those discussions internally. We'd love to talk to Sony and find out...we've talked to them a little bit, but we'd love to find out more specifically to look at our games and see what makes sense. We haven't talked to them in depth about options, but you shouldn't be surprised if we do something with them.

Historically not very close. As a matter of fact, before my time there were evidently some products that were a challenge, where id was this action, fast-paced mature-rated game developer, and Nintendo had different ways of thinking about things. We put out a number of products with Nintendo over the years - ports of our older games and stuff - but it wasn't a great relationship.

But I think it just...we didn't have that much relationship with Nintendo, but I think we're at the point now especially with Orcs & Elves on the DS and some of the things John would like to see on the Wii that we need to re-establish that relationship. I mean, right now we don't have any issues with Nintendo, it's just that we don't have much relationship with them either.

Yeah, it's been an amazing success.

Yeah, I haven't seen any great FPS implementation on the Wii yet.

I think there could be, and honestly we would have to get in and figure out what the id technology solution was for the Wii because it's not id Tech 5 without some major work. We'd have to figure out what the base technology was, and then we'd have to start playing with it and figuring out...you know, the things John was talking about, like putting an oscilloscope between the monitor and the mouse [laughs]. Completely over my head, but those are the kind of things we'd have to look at.

We're very careful with the way our games feel, with the player movement, with the animation, and we would want to spend a lot of time making sure that that game felt right, and if we didn't think we could get there we just wouldn't release a game on the Wii. Like, we wouldn't release an FPS on the Wii unless we could get that feel right. So, I don't know why people have struggled with it, but, if we did it, it would have to feel right.

No, we very much see ourselves as a game developer. The most important part of our business is the games we develop and the IP that we develop - not only the internal stuff but the external stuff we're doing, as with Splash Damage right now. And of course the announcement last night that Wolfenstein multiplayer is being developed by Threewave.

Game development is the main thing we do. It just so happens that along the way while we're developing games, we have one of the greatest engineering minds in the world developing the core technology and he is very pure about the way he writes technology and it's extremely elegantly written solutions that...generally it's very...it's not easy but it's a great basis to create another high quality game with.

I'd say the technology is more of a byproduct of our game development - we're definitely not a technology house that happens to develop games. We're a game house that has technology that happens to be a great licensing solution.