Making Epic Games: Mark Rein Interview

Epic veep talks up Unreal Engine 3.0 and why it won't be coming to the Wii.

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The Xbox 360 is far from the only platform to choose from. The time taken to ensure Gears of War turned out just right meant that the Xbox 360 version was running ahead, but work on the PlayStation 3 version is catching up fast.

Unreal Tournament III is headed to PS3, Xbox 360 and PC

Epic already showed off UE3 on the PlayStation 3, back in 2005, at Sony's briefing ahead of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Things have come a long way since then. Don't, however, expect to see UE3 on Nintendo's new console - at least not in any official capacity.

Thanks to some pretty advanced technical requirements on the graphics and central processors, the Wii finds itself unable to run UE3 in its current form. That might not be the end of the story, though, as Rein explains: "I'm sure one our licensees will, at some point, squeeze it down into the Wii, the way Ubisoft squeezed UE2 into the PSP, for instance."

One group of developers that is being catered to is the mod community - the folks who spend their time modifying games such as Half-Life or the upcoming Unreal Tournament III, layering new clothes over their bodies to give gamers a whole new experience.

The support team at Epic is putting together a technology bible for Unreal Tournament III, a guide that will help developers through the mod creation process. There was something similar for the previous generation of the engine, a book called Mastering Unreal Technology, but Epic is eager to get it into the hands of coders earlier this time around.

And with good reason. There's a chance that the mod community will start getting attention not just from those who play PC games but from console gamers too. Though the tools are staying put on the PC, Rein says Epic is thinking of ways in which modders can get their content into consoles games.

"We're definitely going to try and have the capability of people who make mods using the PC tools to bring them over [to PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360]. We don't want to get too specific about that, as there's still a lot of hoops for us to jump through with the console manufacturers, and they don't like us announcing their stuff."

That leaves open the door for Microsoft and Sony to announce new ways to extend the lives of your games - something both companies have been putting a lot of time into lately. But even if it doesn't, you'll always have Gears of War to show off what UE3 is capable of.

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