Carmack: EA held Wolf RPG back News

id Software co-founder John Carmack has revealed that Wolfenstein RPG is - and has been - ready for release on iPhone for some time. EA apparently held off releasing it so Wolfenstein 3D could have time in the market alone.

"I was disappointed that EA decided to sit on it, but they kinda freaked out when I did the Wolfenstein 3D Classic, as it wasn't a carefully planned thing. I just thought, 'Hey, this is cool and fun, let's release it!'" he told Kotaku. "That blew their planned roll-out - they were worried about selling people two Wolfenstein titles at once. Hopefully they'll release it soon."

Yet Wolfenstein is just the start of future iPhone support, as Carmack revealed that Quake, Quake II, Quake III and even Rage will be ported to the system. He's also keen to show a technical demonstration of the id Tech 5 engine running on iPhone.

An open-source version of Wolfenstein 3D was released earlier this year. Carmack wrote a billion words about his experience making it. He went on to work on Doom Classic and Doom Resurrection, the latter based on Doom III.

id Software was recently acquired by Bethesda Softworks parent ZeniMax. All parties involved, however, claim little will change with the day-to-day running of the studio. EA, meanwhile, will retain its role as publisher of Rage.