Carmack has 'itch' to make Kinect XBLA game

At his QuakeCon keynote session in August, id Software chief technical officer John Carmack repeatedly mentioned his struggle to balance all the projects he wants to do with the time he needs to do just a few of them well. He cleared one of those projects off his slate this week with the release of an iOS version of Rage, but the list of things he'd like to do isn't getting any shorter.

In an interview with Joystiq yesterday, the developer confessed, "I have an itch to make a Kinect title for Xbox Live." However, Carmack doesn't have a solid idea of what that title would look like, telling the site he couldn't use Kinect "for our real games," or for their style of first-person shooters.

Carmack's quotes suggest he has warmed up to the idea of Kinect games since his QuakeCon address. In that speech, Carmack downplayed his interest in working with motion-sensing controllers, saying most of his ideas focus on output rather than input. While he said id Software didn't have plans to use motion controls in its games, he added that he expected someone else to make something spectacular with the technology.

It isn't just his own duties on Rage and the next version of the id Tech engine that could keep Carmack from getting around to working on Kinect. Beyond his workload for id Software, Carmack devotes as much time as he can spare to his own Armadillo Aerospace. Carmack established the upstart rocket company eight years ago and put more than $4 million of his own money into getting it off the ground. The company has since managed to turn a profit, but its main goal remains promoting space exploration by developing cheaper, reusable rocket technology.