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id Software's mobile development branch has been shut down as the company focuses its efforts on getting Doom 4 out the door, John Carmack confirmed during his QuakeCon 2012 keynote speech.
"We did make the decision to close up our mobile development, which saddens me a lot, in that I love doing the mobile work — taking that time, spending a month, a year or something working on a mobile project," Carmack explained, "but we had some developers on there that we wanted to bring onto the Doom 4 project.
"It was looked at as something that; yes, this is fun, this is fun for the company and its entertaining and it makes money, but it's not a grand slam sort of thing on there. The Bethesda family really is about swinging for the fences. I hope we get back to mobile in various ways in the future, but the big real aim is blockbuster, AAA titles, and for id that means Doom 4, it means that we get the whole company behind that after we get Doom 3: BFG Edition out the door, essentially everybody will be focused on Doom 4 as a project."
Carmack later added that the studio had a finished iOS project that it hadn't released yet, but didn't give any more details than that.
"Unfortunately, we have a couple projects — we have an iPhone project that's sitting in the can right now with the rest of the Doom classics stuff, but we just havent been able to push it through," Carmack explained. "We're going to hold off until some appropriate time — maybe we can do it with the Doom 3: BFG stuff on there."
The id Software mobile development team managed to crank out six iOS games since its inception in 2007, including Wolfenstein RPG, Doom: Resurrection, and Rage HD. All of the company's iOS games are on sale for $0.99 until QuakeCon ends this Sunday, August 5th.
As for when Doom 4 would be complete — potentially freeing the mobile developers up once more — Carmack had only the vaguest launch windows to mention.
"Every decade there will be a Doom," Carmack said, "but hopefully we can do better than that."
