Carmack: "This is the year of mobile gaming"

id Software founder and development legend John Carmack has leapt to the defense of the heavily criticised mobile gaming space, claiming: "This may be the year for coming out on mobile".

Speaking in an exclusive interview with our sister site Eurogamer TV, broadcast today, the creator of Doom and Quake revealed his mission to transform the credibility of the platform, fuelled by "moral indignation" at the terrible quality of the vast majority of mobile titles.

"When I first played the games on mobile I was appalled," he blasted. "[I thought,] this phone is more powerful than a Super Nintendo - why do these games suck so badly? There was an element of moral indignation there. This is a cool little platform and the games at least on the phone that I had were rotten."

Carmack was at E3 promoting his new mobile project with EA, Orcs & Elves, which he called "a game for everybody who loved Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter."

And following his success with first mobile title, DoomRPG, Carmack is confident the work of id and others in the space is finally set to establish the platform as a serious, credible option for developers.

"Mobile deserved a lousy reputation for the most part - the games, they sucked," he added. "People are no longer looking at it as a crippled console but as a unique platform with its own characteristics, and I think mobile might end up getting some respect this year - I think some of the titles deserve it."

Elsewhere in the interview, Carmack reveals why he believes PC is no longer a strong platform for standalone offline titles, discusses id's plan to release its top-secret next-gen title simultaneously on PC, Xbox and PlayStation 3, and offers an update on his other side project - the construction of a commercial space craft.

The full exclusive interview is now available on Eurogamer TV.