Legendary graphics programmer and game developer at id Software, John Carmack, has recently stirred the fanboy nest with a statement that is nothing less than controversial: id Software’s next game, the first-person action racing game RAGE, runs faster on the Xbox 360, and “lags a little bit” on the PS3.

These statements appear in the latest issue of Edge magazine, where the team there had an opportunity to interview Carmack about all things id Sofware, which included the revelation that, while RAGE runs at 60 frames a second (fps) on both the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, the PS3 currently only runs at between 20 and 30fps. Here’s Carmack:

“The PS3 lags a little bit behind in terms of getting the performance out of it. The rasteriser is just a little bit slower - no two ways about that.

“The RSX is slower than what we have in the 360,” he continued. “The CPU is about the same, but the 360 makes it easier to split things off, and that’s what a lot of the work has been, splitting it all into jobs on the PS3.”

Further along in the Edge article, Carmack goes on to reveal both positives and negatives for working with the Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware.

John Carmack, with his stature in the computer and videogame graphics circles (as well as the game industry in general), has been known to stir the industry from time to time when he wants to make a point.

An example of this would be when he revealed that the Xbox 360 version of RAGE may end up looking inferior to the PS3 version due to that console’s spacious Blu-Ray capabilities, making it possible to store higher resolution art assets – these types of ‘controversies’ date way back to the early Quake and DOOM days of id.

It’s widely believed that the PS3 version of RAGE will be brought up to speed in time for release sometime next year, but Carmack was probably trying to point out that game development on the PS3 is overtly complex, maybe scaring some Sony executives into action in the process.

It was also confirmed in the Edge article that a Mac version of RAGE is also still in development.

Source: Computer & Videogames