How do you price id Software's legacy?
If Xbox can't see the value in owning the studio that created the first-person shooter, maybe it doesn't belong in the videogame business. The question of valuing cultural impact is as stubborn as Costco's $1.50 hot dog.
In 1984, Costco experimented with a hot dog cart outside its San Diego store, selling a Hebrew National and a drink for $1.50. The combo became Cafe 150; the company sold 245 million of them last year. When a CEO in the 2010s complained they were losing money, founder Jim Sinegal famously replied, "If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out." The price remains $1.50. In 1992, a year‑and‑a‑half after releasing a cutesy 2D platformer called Commander Keen, a tiny group of developers in their teens formed id Software and helped invent the first‑person shooter. They followed with Doom—perhaps the most important computer game of all time—which "was installed on more PCs than Windows." That team grew and made Quake, maybe the defining 3D computer game. Decades later, a new generation at id upheld that legacy, creating a shooter that could stand beside the originals. Then they made an even better one.
