Unreal Engine 4 to Target Consoles (mostly) Exclusively
Thursday, March 13th, 2008 - 9:56pm
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51752
All part of my plan to destroy PC gaming of course. Its a 5 year plan, just need to choose the font.
Your title is a little misleading. Even the source article says that Epic will target consoles first.
That's not misleading, it's just plain wrong.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Yes and we all know what happens to PC when the "later" part comes
I'd say it's likely a case of them taking the consoles as the base-level spec, and leaving the PC to catch up to that before it's supported, expecting (as has happened this generation) that affordable PCs capable of the same performance should be no further than a year or two behind.
Xbox Live: pneuman | PSN: pneuman | my tech/games/rant blag
Well, still understandable - Didn't UT3 tank on the PC?
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
I saw something yesterday that said that UT3 finally sold 1 million copies, the bulk of it being in Europe.
Ah, there it is:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51722
I think the whole thing is misleading, though. Over on Planet Unreal, they posted the press release about the sales, and they said they SHIPPED 1.2 million copies....which explains why I see so many sitting on the shelves everywhere.
To keep that in perspective, I give you Kane and Lynch.
Gears of War reached 4 million in sales so far...if you were a game company, wouldn't you follow your hit title?
I had to laugh the other day -- in an interview, someone asked Mark Rein how Gears was selling on PC, and he honestly didn't know. I think his excuse was that it was CliffyB's title, so he wasn't following it, but when the VP doesn't have at least some idea of the company's sales of a major new title, even if it is just a port, I think that shows just how concerned they are with the PC market these days.
Xbox Live: pneuman | PSN: pneuman | my tech/games/rant blag
And The Rein says
That includes the PS3 version, though, which makes up about 1/3 of that million copies.
And this news shouldn't be surprising, considering the execs have been insinuating their preference for the console market over the past month or so.
I would think the first rule of PR is to ignore forum people, because they vacillate between crazy and liar. - Elysium
Who cares, good riddance. These guys have been making the same game for 10 years.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud.
They have been insinuating their console preference because the PC gamers are sick of UT (especially because release 1 of any edition is buggy crap) after years of the same.
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Gears, anyone?
But really, screw these jerks. I want Carmackto be on top again! He's way cooler then Sweeney.
Actually, I'm sure it's because their engine is licensed more often than not by developers who are also interested in the console market first and foremost. Frankly, I think this bitter and retroactive "Epic games suck" attitude to the story is quite silly.
I would think the first rule of PR is to ignore forum people, because they vacillate between crazy and liar. - Elysium
I think what he really said was the next engine's release date is tied to the console cycle.
But it's no secret that GoW was a big hit on the console and same with CoD4 and other big fps games.
As the Sin of the Solar Empire developers said you need to develop games on the pc with budgets tied to how many copies you can expect to sell. Most of the 'cool' games probably won't be on the pc 'cept as ports.
CoD4 is also a huge hit on PC. Not as big as on consoles (at least not in North America) to be sure but it still sold and continues to sell very well. At any time, there are almost 20,000 servers up and most of them are populated. GoW didn't do well on PC I think not just because it was broken at release (and still is for many) but because it came out so late that anyone who really wanted to play it already did so on 360. Truth be told, I'm not even sure why they bothered. Personally, I think UT3 didn't sell because it came out in a very densely populated shooter period, generally was the same game and the demo turned off a lot of Epic PC loyalists because it was very clearly just a console port. From what I heard, the release version was better but still felt very console-heavy. All Epic games most certainly don't suck. UT3 for the PC users who made that series popular most certainly did.
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Am I the only one that had to read this 3 times and is still scratching his head?
As far as UT going console exclusive? I also say good riddence. I'd like to see them stew in their own juices when they saturate the console market with crap derivative drivel like they've been doing to the PC market for years.
(@)
LOL yeah good call on that one.
Its like theres a civil war going on at that company. Cliffy just wants to be a rockstar and do console games, Sweeney sounds like he would love to work with PC tech but is resigned to consoles now and theres probably more than enough interesting new developments on the next round of consoles that it's not such a bad deal for him. Of all people Rein still carries the PC nostalgia since he has been at both iD *and* Epic.
As far as the blockbusters go, the market has spoken. Consoles have won.
Good to know that we still need to think about "winning" and "losing" and "console wars" - always a pleasure.
Anyways, I could care less about Epic these days. Didn't bother with UT3 and Gears on PC was fun but ultimately disappointing. My only concern is that UT4 engine games like CoD 6 or whatever will ultimately be delayed for PC, but if that means they get the "Mass Effect" treatment, it could be a blessing in disguise.
Valve has and will continue to offer more bang for your FPS buck on PC - Source engine looks fantastic and is much, much better optimized.
How accessible is the Source engine to build complete games out of for third party devs? (And not just HL2 mods, as varied as they might be)?
Morrolan wrote:
XBLA / Steam: Dysplastic
It isn't broken anymore. They did screw up performance and shipped with broken patching mechanism on release, though.
Mouse aim. I would never play a game like that on a console, and I'm really thankful they ported it to PC, because damn, it was worth it. Plus, there's the extra content.
Having mouse-aim without a crosshair felt kind of like drinking non-alcoholic beer - it feels kind of like what you're used to, but it's definitely missing the point.
Morrolan wrote:
XBLA / Steam: Dysplastic
As I think about it, I am currently playing 3 UT engined games: Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, and Ravenshield Las Vegas.
Personally, I wanted what everyone else in the UT world wanted: UT2004 updated. What we appeared to get was UT2003 updated mated to Gamespy. Who wants that?
I want big, expansive, community generated maps, flak cannons, and enough big explosions to bring my 360 to a grinding halt.
I also want to be able, like most other UT fans, to jump into a mod when the mood arises...Tactical Ops, or Dominion on a UT3 engine? That would be awesome.
AFAIK, that isn't possible yet.
Gears of War has crosshairs. Not only it has crosshairs, it even lets you know where your grenade is about to land.
Of course there are blind firing modes, but that's by design. The vast majority of the time you actually use the crosshairs.
You guys do realize that UE4 is not console exclusive, right? And the Unreal Tournament franchise is also not console exclusive? I thought Spunior kind of ironed it out 8 replies down from the top, and yet the pointless fury continues.
Also, IIRC the first Call of Duty game, a PC exclusive, lacked crosshairs. It's been a Call of Duty "thing" since the beginning of the series.
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I think some of the anti-Epic stuff could be antipathy towards Unreal Engine 3. You play enough UE3 games and you realize that they are all very similar and look and they all have some of the same problems. It's enough to make you wish for a future where, if devs need to lean heavily on middleware, there are many players in the middleware arena.
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Glad to see this turned into another PC vs Consoles thread!
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
No kidding. I didn't mind texture pop in when it creeped into a few games, but it's getting pretty ridiculous. I'm fine with having a lower resolution final texture if I don't have the pop in. You know what? Just put in lower resolutions as an option and you can still have your fancy-pants screenshots to sell your game with.
Danjo Olivaw Lives
Ooooookay then.
/backs slowly out of thread
Xbox Live: CrankyBaby
baggachipz: Who cares about Japan, let them have their silly pointless dog games and countless re-hashes of anime-based dragon princess super lucky crapitty crap.
No kidding.
It's getting just as old as Microsoft v. Linux, Vi v. Emacs, McDonalds v. Burger King, Coke v. Pepsi....umm Sodom v. Gomorrah.
Emacs you heathen!
I'm happy to see this turn into Gamers v. Unreal Engine 3.
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