Unreal Engine 4 geared for next-gen consoles

79 Comments by Randy Nelson Jul 24th 2008 4:15PM
Filed under: Business

Despite the fact that Unreal Engine 3 has been licensed by, oh, everyone for building their current-gen games, results have been hit or miss. While developers continue to get to grips with the current iteration of the technology, its creator, Epic Games, is already at work building the next version to ~~stump them~~ make their lives easier ... in the future.

In news sure to make Dennis Dyack happy, Epic's president, Mike Capps, revealed at Microsoft's Gamefest technology conference that the successors to the current crop of consoles (even Wii?) are its target platforms for Unreal Engine 4. "We've got Unreal [Engine] 4 in production right now," Capps told the gathering of developers, adding, "it's going to be in the next console generation ... our rough guess is 2012 to 2018." So, there you have it. Xbox 720 in 2012. We kid. We aren't kidding when we say that we hope developers other than Epic and a handful of others get a sound grasp on UE3 before then.

Tags: epic-games, middleware, unreal-engine, unreal-engine-4

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(Page 1) Reader Comments

Churchy: Jul 24th 2008; 4:20PM

Yay, next gen light bloom and shiny surfaces! Also I hope its good at rendering browns, and iterations of brown.

samfish: Jul 24th 2008; 4:49PM

It's bigger, browner and more bad ass!

makishima: Jul 24th 2008; 4:56PM

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/case-studies.php?ref=lazytown

It's all down to the people who make the content with the engine. Blame the individual game makers not Epic....even though Epic makes Gears and it does fall into there. Still, a different team works on the engine as opposed to the games.

Marty: Jul 24th 2008; 5:01PM

I don't care if the entire screen is just a brown to gray gradient... if it's fun, I'm in.

Lone Starr: Jul 24th 2008; 4:23PM

So we've officially made the transition from next gen back to current gen for this generation. Got it.

Doesn't sound as cool anymore though. :(

Autopsy15: Jul 24th 2008; 5:27PM

Actually, everyone was supposed to call this generations consoles "current-gen" when the PS3 launched, as it was the last of the "next-gen" consoles. And you'd call PS2 last-gen and I guess Wii would be "new-gen".

Vol: Jul 24th 2008; 4:29PM

Sources close to me that work at MS have revealed the next Xbox will feature dual HDMI, 3 ethernet ports, 4D support, and other useless marketing gimmicks.

I just love piling on Sony for E3 '05.

Lone Starr: Jul 24th 2008; 4:36PM

Well that was 3 years ago and maybe we should all move on?

Vol: Jul 24th 2008; 4:39PM

Ok ok.. I just hope they learned a lesson not to release and hype console features publicly until they are finalized. Otherwise it's just false advertising.

eldee: Jul 24th 2008; 4:43PM

Meanwhile, sources at Nintendo have revealed that the next gen system they are working includes a third gamecube and even more duct tape.

Xoviet chiK: Jul 24th 2008; 4:45PM

...And you can hook it up to a Computer Monitor!

DangerMouse: Jul 24th 2008; 4:57PM

RIIIIIIDGGGEEEEE RAAACCCCEERRRRR!!!!

(Did i get it right that time?)

WhoMe: Jul 24th 2008; 5:05PM

I have it on good authority that the Xbox 720 will reach a BILLION people.

Donald: Jul 24th 2008; 5:37PM

If it doesn't have blast processing I'm not buying it.

Phantom: Jul 24th 2008; 5:47PM

And what do they want you to do with 2 HDMI , abd 3 ethernet ports , hook it up to 2 HDTV's at once, and have it connected to your internet connection at the same time as both your neighbours?

and 4D , pfft , the PS3 already does that ...

Now that I said that I'm get attacked by how 4D is useless , than the same Xbots will be bragging about the 720 doing 4D in 3 years .

mr mobius: Jul 24th 2008; 6:30PM

Nintendo Vii (they'll aim it towards a Chinese market) will have current gen graphics because Nintendo knows that by then developers will have put too much effort into the UE3 engine to let it drop so they'll all develop for the Vii and ignore the Playstation 3.1 (it has all that Playstation 3 has but has games as well) as well as the virtual console that will be the Xbox52k that won't even have a console except for controllers which will act from signals relayed from Microsoft through the internet, and your game purchases will just be codes to unlock games from their server.

The_Punisher: Jul 24th 2008; 7:51PM

Will the XBOX 720 have 2 rings, therefore making 2 RRoD at once?

xD

FOXHOUND: Jul 25th 2008; 10:42AM

Phantom ---

You can use HDMI for audio and video setups, so two ports actually could be come useful in the upcoming years(assuming obvious price drops in equipment, HDTVs, and surround sound devices).

Tiptup300: Jul 24th 2008; 4:30PM

Seriously, Am i the only one who is irritated by how big all the dudes are in Epic's games? They just look so freaking stupid.

Xoviet chiK: Jul 24th 2008; 4:34PM

You could totally play Rock Band drums on that Fenix's Chest Piece.

I liked the Art Direction in Unreal Championship 2, though. Such an overlooked beauty.

Matthew: Jul 24th 2008; 4:36PM

Judging by the way their games sell, I would say you are the minority.

DangerMouse: Jul 24th 2008; 5:03PM

Agreed. I see a ventilation shaft, and all i want to do is crouch and crawl inside. Then i realize that they're too big to fit, and I turn the game off out of frustration.

Haggard: Jul 24th 2008; 5:05PM

I enjoyed Gears, but yeah, the characters were a joke :P

Then again, if the future of humanity was in the balance, I'd hope as many steroids as possible were consumed.

TwEE: Jul 24th 2008; 5:39PM

I fucking loathe epic's character designs.. They're straight out of some cheesy 90s image comic. Epic should just let Rob Liefeld go already.

Linkman2004: Jul 24th 2008; 6:01PM

Their character design has always reminded me of these guys:
http://www.peak.org/~bonwritr/billyblazes2.jpg

I am a machineee: Jul 24th 2008; 4:34PM

Glad to see Joystiq never misses a beat when it comes to nippling on Microsoft's tit.

Lone Starr: Jul 24th 2008; 4:38PM

How? An "Xbox 720" joke is funnier than a "PS4" joke. Where do you get pro-MS bias from this post?

And of all posts, this one seems to be attracting the SDF. Whatever.

Vol: Jul 24th 2008; 4:43PM

MS has recently talked about being the next console out of the gate for the next generation again. Hence the Xbox 720 joke.

Xoviet chiK: Jul 24th 2008; 4:44PM

Plus, this was revealed at "Microsoft's Gamefest technology conference."

I am a machineee: Jul 24th 2008; 4:54PM

I just seem to see a bit of bias towards the PlayStation 3 more often than not on this site. I love Joystiq but sometimes they are very critical of the PS3 when 360 can do no wrong (in most cases).

theturtle363: Jul 24th 2008; 5:03PM

kotaku had this same thing up today too. It's not just Joystiq being biased, it's that the PS3 sucks

Marty: Jul 24th 2008; 5:07PM

If they report all the flubs each company makes, and one company happens to make more than the others this time around, how is that Joystiq's fault?

eldee: Jul 24th 2008; 5:24PM

turtle speaks the truth

Duke: Jul 24th 2008; 5:27PM

OMFG Joystiq iz teh bias!

John McPoop (PSN:johnnynumber5): Jul 25th 2008; 12:24AM

Well I am not one to throw out accusations (looks at NATO Duke) but I do remember a deal in place between Microsoft and AOL (parent company of Joystiq, Engadget and the fanboy sites) around the 98-00 years that gave AOL ad revenue in exchange for support of Microsoft's Internet explorer (or something to that effect).

I am not saying that such a deal is still in place. However, anyone who has their head out of the sand knows Microsoft could not reach an agreement with Yahoo and is currently rumored to be in talks with AOL as a backup plan.

If a new deal was done and Microsoft did end up getting AOL there would certainly be some "just cause" with making accusations of institutional bias. Anyone with a critical eye would have to ask themselves if (at that point) all of Microsoft's surrogates are just propaganda.

Xoviet chiK: Jul 24th 2008; 4:40PM

Next-Gen 1 GB or 2 GB RAM?

I'm playing Mass Effect right now, and I'd kill to never have Pop-In ever again.

Ziggy55: Jul 24th 2008; 4:51PM

The pop-in is a result of the DVD drive being too slow, not a lack of memory.

gb: Jul 24th 2008; 4:58PM

@ziggy55:
If the system had more ram, it would not need to constantly read texture data from the disc. Please do not comment on technical matters without knowledge of technical matters.

vectorelement: Jul 24th 2008; 5:00PM

So if we install Mass Effect onto our 360 HDDs, will that end the Pop-In?

The Fatass of Kickassness: Jul 24th 2008; 5:03PM

No, because then, rather than accessing the data from DVD, the game would have to access it from the hard drive, which, while quicker than DVD, still isn't near as quick as recalling a resource from RAM

Ziggy55: Jul 24th 2008; 5:04PM

gb - You're wrong.

Vector - Yes.

A big part of the reason the PS3 installs games is becuase it can't read the larger, uncompressed textures fast enough from the BR disc. If it didn't install the games load times would be REALLY bad and popup would be horrendous.

Mr Khan: Jul 24th 2008; 5:51PM

I'm betting 2 GB for Sony and Microsoft, and 1 GB for whatever Nintendo chooses to do, basing that off of my $1400 laptop with 2 GB of RAM

Prices will be low enough by then to be readily accessible, and the prices of multicore processors will be cheap enough to allow Nintendo to build something that will at least be in the ballpark this time

Addy: Jul 25th 2008; 4:36AM

I had an software in Xbox 1, where i could copy games to my HDD. That didnt stop the Halo 2 pop-ins, so i guess hdd install aint gonna change nothin

of course, Halo 2's pop ins are different than Mass Effects. Who knows

Residentevil72501: Jul 24th 2008; 4:45PM

I was watching the Rage trailer the other day and i dunno the IdTech5 engine, i think could probably beat the tar out of the Unreal 3 engine. Plus i have very little respect for the people at Epic sure GoW is pretty cool but they are hella douche bags.

WhoMe: Jul 24th 2008; 5:13PM

Glad I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Sure, Gears was fun to breeze through (was damn short..), but I don't get the whole reverence.

It's just this generation Xbox's Halo: ok but way overhyped. Especially in the eyes of PC gamers.

And what's with their attitude and the whole CliffyB trip. Sad.

theturtle363: Jul 24th 2008; 4:52PM

I am so damn sick of the Unreal 3 engine, every game that uses it has that same slicky, oily, and ridiculously bloomed look, especially with lighting. I hate that shit

Churchy: Jul 24th 2008; 5:27PM

Oily is a good word for how UE3 games generally looks. Surfaces that have no business being shiny do, like skin and hair cloth.

It is pretty gross looking.

Tina: Jul 24th 2008; 4:53PM

>>>Tiptup300

you are not alone, my friend. i have to agreed with you. the gears of war characters all look stupid. the whole game is stupid. but that's just my opinion.

Cyro: Jul 24th 2008; 5:29PM

You are stupid.

xFenixKnightx: Jul 24th 2008; 6:27PM

>>>Cyro

you are not alone, my friend. i have to agreed with you. tina looks stupid. her?/his whole post is stupid. but that's just my opinion.

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