Bethesda Blog has played host to the venerable Mr Carmack talking about squishing down RAGE to run on the iPhone/iPad (and at 60fps, no less), where he goes into detail about problems with the device's OS, download size and asserts that what they're working on isn't the full console/PC version of RAGE, but rather a specific title that works to the device's strengths and only utilises the media pipeline of RAGE, ie visual assets and the like (though they're still using megatexturing, which is impressive unto itself).
The read itself is fascinating, even for non-tech heads (such as myself), and goes into great detail about overcoming limitations and hurdles in iPhon/iPad development, and really reveals just how viable these platforms are in the right hands.
From his post:
The little slice of RAGE that we decided to build the iPhone product around is “Mutant Bash TV”, a post apocalyptic combat game show in the RAGE wasteland. This is the perfect setup for a quintessential first person shooter game play experience — you pick your targets, aim your shots, time your reloads, dodge the bad guys, and try and make it through to the end of the level with a better score than last time. Beyond basic survival, there are pickups, head shots, and hit streak multipliers to add more options to the gameplay, and there is a broad range of skill levels available from keep-hitting-fire-and-you-should-make-it to almost-impossible.
Hit the link at the start of the news post for the full article.