No unreal 3 engine for WII

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/games/0,72616-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1

 

WN: It's also tough to ignore the success of the Wii at this point. Do you guys have any plans to be in that space?

 

Rein: Hey, we're in that space! Red Steel, Splinter Cell -- those use our previous engine technology. But it's not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It's really designed for next-gen, high-definition.

 

 

Saw that one coming

 

Your thoughts?

 

 

Edit: If I'm digging up old cows here, feel free to lock this.

Wasn't bothered around a year ago when this was known, I'm not really bothered now.

*ahem* Sorry, but it has to be said.

 

No shit Sherlock!!!

Wasn't bothered around a year ago when this was known, I'm not really bothered now.

 

yeah agree...

This doesn't really bear much relevance to anything...except that we won't be seeing downgraded ports of next gen games on Wii, which can only be a good thing.

This doesn't really bear much relevance to anything...except that we won't be seeing downgraded ports of next gen games on Wii, which can only be a good thing.

 

Exactly...Does the Wii really want games like the GC Ghost Recon? I think not.

I thought Mark Rein said they were going to release an Unreal Engine 2.5 specially designed for the wii.

 

Guess thats a no from them then.

 

Shame hoped we may of seen something like GoW made from a 3rd party from a wii guess thats a no then.

This doesn't really bear much relevance to anything...except that we won't be seeing downgraded ports of next gen games on Wii, which can only be a good thing.

 

yes but i would rather if they started high and made a downgrade rather than starting low(ps2) and trying ot make an upgrade

"It's not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It's really designed for next-gen, high-definition [platforms]," said Rein. "One of our licensees has been porting it, and they might be successful at that, and that would be great if they do it. It's doable, but not something that we're going to focus on."

The licensee he's talking about is Ubisoft. Maybe they are creating a pseudo-UE3 engine for Red Steel 2...

This doesn't really bear much relevance to anything...except that we won't be seeing downgraded ports of next gen games on Wii, which can only be a good thing.

 

yep our own wii builds can only be a good thing. I think EA (never thought I'd say this) are going the right way setting up a studio to handle wii versions of games, a dedicated studio at that, so whilst they are porting they are soley there to do that, rather than cobbling together a version as an after thought.

 

yes but i would rather if they started high and made a downgrade rather than starting low(ps2) and trying ot make an upgrade

 

But that problem only exists whilst the PS2 is around, once its a dead console it becomes less of a problem. problem is if the PS1 is anything to go by it won't die out fast enough. but I'm willing to play the waiting game.

 

I suppose it could be argued that we will see PSP conversions like Prince of Persia seems to be, but I think even this will die down abit as there are very obvious technical differences between a handheld and a home console.

They need to create an original engine for wii, perhaps call it Unreal Wii, tbh Wii does not need U3E as wii is not about graphics

But that problem only exists whilst the PS2 is around, once its a dead console it becomes less of a problem. problem is if the PS1 is anything to go by it won't die out fast enough. but I'm willing to play the waiting game.

 

And I'm sure the Wii, plus low sales of the PS3 is helping to keep the PS2 alive for a long time.

well... this goes both ways, EPIC is not interested in supporting Wii with UE3, the reason it's not lack of power, even if it was the engine can be stripped... it's lack of HD.

 

That's EPIC's UE3 real advantage over last gen, and thus they don't see much advantage in making Wii running it.

 

Possible? yeah, at least like UE2.5 was possible on PS2, the advantage? easy porting for wii; the disavantage? multiplatform games being done for Wii could lower the bar graphics-wise when they want their Engine to reign in that department.

 

Also... Unreal 2.5 for GC was crap, look at Red Steel and you'll just know it; the engine has handycaps it's not optimized and well... Xbox had a "special" edition named Unreal Engine 2.x heavily optimized, that gave it a edge, and what a edge, seriously, look at Splinter Cell 4 on Xbox; that's ubisoft on a inferior console using UE2.x...

 

EPIC should heavy optimize UE2.5 for Wii too, if they are really not going to release UE3 for it, because if I was a developer I'd just ditch their unoptimized middleware if I were to make a Wii game.

 

Oh well, Ubisoft didn't.

Oh well. I don't suppose the Wii could take that much advantage from it if was ported. It's a shame we're missing out on some major ports now though.

I remember there being an article about a Quake dev who said that the Unreal engine would be best suited for the "Nintendo Revolution" (yeah, it was that long ago).

Unreal Engine 2.5 is more than enough for the Wii when it comes to graphics but the engine is not simply a tool to create 3D environments and stuff but it comes also with a great range of tools, scripts and help for a developer to maintain a efficient workflow.

 

I personally would like to see a custom UE for the Wii with code extra written to take advantage of the Wii hardware + the upgraded scripts/toolset of the UE 3. The problem is EPIC would have to do a lot of work and the monetary benefits wouldn't be very rewarding for the first years - after all which games right now would need a Unreal Engine on the Wii?

after all which games right now would need a Unreal Engine on the Wii?

Red Steel already uses the GameCube Unreal Engine, so I expect devs have a demand for a premade engine.

Red Steel already uses the GameCube Unreal Engine, so I expect devs have a demand for a premade engine.

Yes, and Sonic and the Secret Rings seems to use RenderWare Engine like Sonic Heroes did, unless that was a mistyping.

 

Manhunt 2 probably uses one too, as Rockstar by tradition uses pre-made engines; besides pre-made engines weren't that rare last gen, they're needed.

 

EPIC's service for Wii and GC before it was lame at best, it was aceptable with Unreal Engine 2.0 (XIII for example) but if I recall correctly the rendering engine was rewritten for revision 2.5 (I'm no expert at changes between versions in UE revisions); and well... Red Steel still seemed like UE2.0 to me when it came to rendering.

 

When I see a interview where he says "we are on it, look at Red Steel" I just think, did he even play it? I mean... it's playable and all, but not a option for most developers the game runs sluggish when it could easily run at 60 frames.

Heres more on this from GoNintendo, looks like it may be coming our way yet...

 

 

I thought I was going crazy when I read this. I searched around a number of sources to see if the news we reported was different from what everyone else did. I found the exact same quotes we used in our original story. I even checked our story comments to see if I missed something that you guys caught. The only place I saw the full quote was NeoGAF, which I will explain later.

 

Stick with me on this one, it’s worth it. Okay, so a couple days back we posted an interview with Mark Rein that was conducted by Wired. Here is the portion we had posted from the interview.

 

Wired: It’s also tough to ignore the success of the Wii at this point. Do you guys have any plans to be in that space?

 

Rein: Hey, we’re in that space! Red Steel, Splinter Cell — those use our previous engine technology. But it’s not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It’s really designed for next-gen, high-definition.

 

Now this evening a GameSpot article popped up that quoted the Wired interview…but there excerpts were a tad different. I clicked over to the Wired interview once again, and it seems that what we saw before was the shortened version. Here is Mr. Rein’s full answer.

 

WN: It’s also tough to ignore the success of the Wii at this point. Do you guys have any plans to be in that space?

 

MR: Hey, we’re in that space! Red Steel, Splinter Cell — those use our previous engine technology. There’s a Brothers in Arms game as well. there will be quite a few games on the Wii that we get a little involvement from us. But it’s not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It’s really designed for next-gen, high-definition. One of our licensees has been porting it, and they might be successful at that, and that would be great if they do it. It’s doable, but not something that we’re going to focus on.

 

Well, doesn’t that give a bit more information?! As I was saying, when we posted the news, the short version of the interview was the only one available. It seems that many news outlets reported on the first version, not knowing that the full version was coming. As I was researching what happened, I found a NeoGAF post where they were discussing the extended quote above. The first post in their thread is dated a little over a day later from when we covered it.

 

As Mr. Rein states, there indeed is a Brothers in Arms title in the works for the Wii. Last we heard, this was a port of D-Day which was released on the PSP (see story below for another confirmation). After hunting around a little bit more, I found this excerpt from an IGN article.

 

Insiders claim that Gearbox was at one point experimenting with Unreal Engine 3 and attempting to create a dumbed-down version that would run on Wii. Unfortunately, we have been unable to confirm the accuracy of those rumors.

 

So Mr. Rein confirms the title, states that someone is working to port the UE3 to the Wii, and IGN claims they heard rumors of Gearbox trying to get it done. It seems way too coincidental for all three of these things to come together like that, and not turn out to be true.

Lets hope they are succesful in bringing a scaled down version of Unreal Engine 3 to Wii. Give developers better tools to really push the console to its limits.

Nobody could port the engine like Epic could if they tried. Apparently Nintendo will have to kick the PS3's ass for another couple of months to make that clear to them.

Nobody could port the engine like Epic could if they tried. Apparently Nintendo will have to kick the PS3's ass for another couple of months to make that clear to them.

No doubt about that, still I want to see the results, not that I'm expecting too much, but still... It takes guts for Gearbox to even attempt to port it; I mean... usually developers buy a pre-built engine so they don't have to deal too much with it, but these guys are loosing their time making it to run, as if "if there isn't a UE3 for Wii we'll just create one", that's valuable and a whole better attitude over it than EPIC's own, that's worthy of respect.

 

Of course though, the question is how good will this port be, but it won't be anywhere near what EPIC could have done with knowledge and optimization, it's also their custom built UE3.0 engine not something oficial that all developers will have access to and they certainly can't distribute it to other dev houses, as they don't own the rights for the engine.

 

If all company's in the industry were requiring a UE3.0 in order to develop for Wii I'd like to see EPIC saying no.

Yeah, I applaud Gearbox for trying, and hopefully the result makes a good improvement over UE2.5, which should be very doable. Makes you wonder what game they're actually making...

Well, I don;t think this is a huge problem. Maybe Nintendo should commission a fantastic engine for Wii FPSs and license it to companies producing for the Wii

Well, I don;t think this is a huge problem. Maybe Nintendo should commission a fantastic engine for Wii FPSs and license it to companies producing for the Wii

 

That is probably the most sensible method of doing things.

The only way the Wii will shine properly is if things are done with the system in mind and build from ground up imho.