An Epic Rein

Epic Games' VP talks Unreal Engine, Unreal Tournament III, Gears of War and more.
4/23/2008 8:27 PM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 5

Crispy Gamer: What about this one versus the last Unreal -- it sold a lot more then than it is now.

Rein: No, no. I think that's a myth. Unreal Tournament typically sells a million each time we put one out. The first one sold three million because that included two games: the original and the Game of the Year edition, which may as well have been the second game. We also had it on four platforms. We had a PlayStation 2 version, we had a Dreamcast version, we had it on Mac and Linux, it was on everything. So naturally this one is on the three platforms. No, we're happy with it. You see we announced the contest? The $1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest? Those are the kind of things you do. This game isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.

Crispy Gamer: Is it always generally like, not a slow burn, but it's not like bang out the door -- like Halo for example -- which sells a ton right away, and then --

Rein: You're looking at big single-player focused games. The multiplayer game market is a very different animal. You can't compare an Unreal game to a Halo game, or Gears of War, for that matter. That's the difference between doing a big story-driven single-player game; it's much more accessible. Our game is a multiplayer style of a game. The audience is going to be less for that, but most game developers would kill to have the sales we have. [laughs]

It's funny, I see all this reaction, you know, people saw that first two weeks of sales -- that's all it was on NPD -- they jumped to all kinds of conclusions. Well, we're doing really well on PlayStation 3, as well. We'll do well on Xbox 360.

Crispy Gamer: How'd you like how well it turned out on PlayStation 3?

Rein: Very pleased. Very pleased with PlayStation 3.

Crispy Gamer: Speaking of the Make Something Unreal contest, what are you looking for? The last one that you guys did had insanely different modifications for the game. What is something that you'd really like to see come out of this contest?

Rein: The only phase that's really going on right now is what we call the "early bird" phase. We announced the contest with the first judging in June. It's only giving people a few months really to get started, it's a new generation. I think, though, later on we'll see some amazing stuff, just like last time. This engine has way more capabilities than previous versions of UT had. You can do so much more as you can see from the licensees. You can make a wide gamut of games, so who knows? We never made any predictions last time, we just kind of got lucky. There's really a lot of luck involved in getting the mod makers up to speed and getting them excited about it. We're definitely going to try and spark their imagination a bit.

Crispy Gamer: The 360 version of the game that you announced today, which we knew was coming, but we didn't know much about it, there's 5 exclusive maps?

Rein: It's three absolutely brand new maps, and two re-envisioning. I was kind of like, well, they're exclusive, whatever. It's really three completely new maps, and they're really good. You should definitely play them.