Truly elite software developers are as rare as Jordans, i.e. one every 20 years or so. John Carmack would probably fall into the elite category, Dennis Ritchie was probably his generation's "Jordan" - but if you're defining elite in Jordan/LeBron terms we wouldn't expect to see many elite developers.
But it is also interesting to consider the possibility that because we don't have a measuring system like sports, there is a Michael Jordan of software on the planet right now but nobody has ever heard of him/her.
I think I remember reading one source claiming that his real gift was being able to develop graphics engines at just the right level of sophistication to just barely run well on the latest desktop computers that would be available when the engine was ready, even though the development project was started years before. If that's his main talent, it's definitely a gift, but does it make him an elite developer? Or is he more of an elite marketer/market analyst?
The part were he also CREATED those engines (instead of just predicting the arrival or relevant desktop systems capable of running them) makes him a developer, not a marketer/analyst.
It also seems you didn't fully realize what you quoted.
Being able to "develop graphics engines at just the right level of sophistication to just barely run well on the latest desktop computers that would be available when the engine was ready" means that he could program at the cutting edge of what's possible for the available desktop hardware everytime...
Not many people can do that, and do it consistently and well, and in a field as difficult as 3D games (most of us people on HN for comparison, Rails/JS guys etc, are glorified CRUD developers).
Take Mark Zuckerberg for example. He's probably a really good developer, but he didn't become a famous billionaire on development skill alone. He is where he is because he had the right idea at the right time, and executed it aggressively and intelligently. Is that a separate skill from pure development, or is it part of being an elite developer?