Epic's Unreal blues
I tend to not cover too much of the PS3 news on this blog because I
don't have one and there isn't a whole lot out yet worth buying one yet
for but this story is too good to pass up. Epic games, creator of
Gears of War, Unreal Tournament and the Unreal middle ware engine, have
been sued by Silicon Knights over their failure to deliver a finished
PS3 version of the Unreal 3 engine for the PS3. It has been the quite
rumor around the gaming world that the PS3 version of the engine kind
of sucks and is causing a lot of games to be seriously delayed or even
canceled. One of the biggest examples was RainbowSix:Vegas for the PS3
that was supposed to be a launch title but didn't come out until
recently.
Epic ran around the game industry showing off Gears of War and their Unreal 3 saying how it made building great looking games for 360 and PS3 easier and cheaper. The response was everyone wanted their tech and we saw several games companies license the engine. For the most part the 360 games that have used the engine seem to have had no problem. There where a couple stinkers out there but it was by no means the engine's fault. That is unless you are talking about Silicon Knights and their game Too Human. Too Human was shown at E3 '06 and was slammed for having a horrible frame rate and since then has not been seen. The folks at Silicon Knight said it was the Unreal engine that was to blame and Epic responded it wasn't their fault because Silicon Knight was using an unfinished version of the engine.
Now Silicon Knights had also purchased an agreement to receive a PS3 version of the engine as well. The contract date has come and gone so know they are suing Epic for break of contract and the damages for the harm this has caused their products. Recently it was discovered that Epic and Sony have signed a deal to work together to optimize the Unreal 3 engine for the PS3 and to deliver Unreal Tournament 3 exclusively to the PS3. This deal is a bit late for some games but should strengthen the future games available for the PS3 that choose to use the Unreal 3 engine.
Epic ran around the game industry showing off Gears of War and their Unreal 3 saying how it made building great looking games for 360 and PS3 easier and cheaper. The response was everyone wanted their tech and we saw several games companies license the engine. For the most part the 360 games that have used the engine seem to have had no problem. There where a couple stinkers out there but it was by no means the engine's fault. That is unless you are talking about Silicon Knights and their game Too Human. Too Human was shown at E3 '06 and was slammed for having a horrible frame rate and since then has not been seen. The folks at Silicon Knight said it was the Unreal engine that was to blame and Epic responded it wasn't their fault because Silicon Knight was using an unfinished version of the engine.
Now Silicon Knights had also purchased an agreement to receive a PS3 version of the engine as well. The contract date has come and gone so know they are suing Epic for break of contract and the damages for the harm this has caused their products. Recently it was discovered that Epic and Sony have signed a deal to work together to optimize the Unreal 3 engine for the PS3 and to deliver Unreal Tournament 3 exclusively to the PS3. This deal is a bit late for some games but should strengthen the future games available for the PS3 that choose to use the Unreal 3 engine.
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