Discussing the problems associated with creating top-line triple-A products, Carmack said: "Absolute best-case scenario, it would take us two and a half years to develop a high-end product," expressing the creative frustration involved with long dev times.

As a result, Carmack revealed that id's next title, following the release of Doom 3, would have a "really short development time". Since this automatically rules out building a major new game from scratch, Carmack said that for id's next title he would be turning to his existing portfolio, stunning attendees with word of a "Quake 2 remix, where we don't have to redo everything. This way people get more value from current technology."

Carmack revealed that he and id thought about, and then dropped, a plan to revisit Quake II, remaking the same exact game but use an all new graphics engine as a way to show off the engine without having to concentrate on game development.

In a Q&A after the keynote, Carmack stated that he wondered why future game consoles like the PS2 and the Xbox 2 will likely use multi-processors, saying such technology has not worked well for consoles in the past and wondered why this way of working was back in vogue again from console makers.