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Carmack is an absolute genius and it would be madness to disregard anything he's spent any significant amount of time thinking about.

But let's be real, he isn't Tim Sweeny or Gabe Newell. As smart he is, I don't think he is even top 3 in the best business decision makers of his specific field of first person shooter game developers. His track record is that using his tremendous skill he caught one of the biggest waves, and he's been riding that out and catching smaller waves ever since. I don't even think he didn't see the larger subsequent waves that Sweeney and Newell saw, I think he just wasn't interested in them.

Was he interested in catching big waves for Facebook, or was he interested in pursuing his specific vision?



Doom kicked ass not because it was trying to catch big waves but because they followed their specific vision. Making shit tons of money is not everything.

Agree that Sweeney seems to be the better captain. And he left carmack in the dust with unreal.


I am pretty sure the big sticking point is Carmack thinks they should be doing the opposite of putting out $1500 headsets.

He was pretty much taking shots at people during his Meta Connect talk this year. There is nothing shocking about him leaving.


Perhaps this is the point of criticizing 5% utilization of the gpu. Why not have 90% gpu utilization of a $400 headset? Which strategy is more likely to succeed in gaining more adoption?


Is battery life a checkbox with this hypothetical? VR/AR and battery life can be very important for many applications.




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