However Epic’s Jay Wilbur says two markets they’re watching now are Brazil and the Middle-east. They’re ”now lifting” in hardware specs and quality he says.
When they released the free UDK for anyone to try their hand at some Unreal Engine development it was South Korea’s Seoul that was the lead city for downloads for the ”first several months of its life outside of Epic,” revealed Jay Wilbur in an interview.
Right now Epic is keen to keep close tabs on two markets that have previously been left behind in thought: Brazil and the Middle-east.
”The two markets that I’m watching are the Middle East and Brazil. Brazil has been up and coming for a while. It’s a great marketplace, and their hardware spec is now lifting to the point where they’re digging into some really high quality games,” said Wilbur.
”And the mobile space is exploding there.”
”And the Middle East is generally a marketplace that’s ignored by the West. There’s a lot of quality developers there, there’s a lot of Middle East lore that we as Westerners don’t know. We know Ali Baba, Prince of Persia, you know, Aladdin, but there’s so much deep IP and lore there that needs to be explored,” he continued.
”So those are a couple of the marketplaces that I’ve been paying attention to and talking to developers there.” Unreal Engine 3 is the leading third-party licensed engine used by the games industry, although there are others always nipping at its heels.
Does Wilbur see Epic expanding locally to Brazil and the Middle-east?
”Right now no, I don’t. Right now it’s more along the lines of me going over, shaking hands and kissing babies and establishing the relationships with developers.”
”Who knows? At some point it might make sense to do something, but right now it’s helping the market grow and establish, and then once it does grow and establish, then we probably will have those discussion about whether we should go in and set up shop locally.”
Check out the full interview between Jay Wilbur and Gamasutra. Do you count some of your most favourite games as being powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine technology?