While the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft promise to have a lot of power, it can be hard to unlock all of that potential at once. Because of that, Epic Games thinks that Unreal Engine 3 will be good enough for a lot of the first products to release on the next generation of consoles.
“Samaritan is something you can do right now. In fact, Unreal Development Kit has all the features that powered Samaritan – every single graphics feature you can do. We could have shown another 30 videos,” said Epic’s VP Mark Rein. “We have guys doing stuff on high end PCs that are just outside of the gaming space that are really pushing the envelope there. So that to us is pretty exciting – and you can do that now.”
“UE3 is already available for that sort of stuff,” he added. “I think if you were going to do a launch title for a future console, UE3 would probably be the way to go. And likewise if you were going to do something cross-generational, like Mortal Kombat on PS Vita, Xbox, PS3 and potentially it could be on iPad… that’s Unreal. Unreal spans the gamut, it goes from the smallest smartphone platforms up to the highest spec PC you can build and beyond.”
“The UE4 stuff is very futuristic,” he noted. “UE3 is really the horse for this year.”
Of course, demand is also increasing for middleware, but it’s not strictly on AAA projects anymore. “Not everybody, but lots of people would like to take their games to more and more places,” Rein explained. “It’s not enough to just have a PC game anymore. Look at Dungeon Defenders; iOS, Android, Steam, Xbox Live, PSN, web, Mac… they sold a million units, and this is a small developer. So I think it’s not just up or down, but it’s also horizontal.”
Source: CVG