Epic is proud of its new graphic engine, the Unreal Engine 4, but the developer doubts that it’ll be featured much on the next generation of consoles that are reputedly arriving in 2013. According to executive Mark Rein, Unreal Engine 3 will be ”the way to go” for most devs.
Referring to the stunning tech demo that has shown off the capabilities of Unreal Engine 4, Rein stated: ”Samaritan is something you can do right now. In fact, Unreal Development Kit has all the features that powered Samaritan - every single graphics feature you can do. We could have shown another 30 videos.”
Rein described UE3 as a ”horse” while UE4 was ”futuristic”, and that at the moment, there was nothing on current hardware that couldn’t be done on UE3. ”UE3 is already available for that sort of stuff. I think if you were going to do a launch title for a future console, UE3 would probably be the way to go.”He then added that for multiplatform titles, UE3 was optimal. ”If you were going to do something cross-generational, like Mortal Kombat on PS Vita, Xbox, PS3 and potentially it could be on iPad… that’s Unreal. Unreal spans the gamut, it goes from the smallest smartphone platforms up to the highest spec PC you can build and beyond”.
He then pointed out Dungeon Defenders as an Unreal Engine 3 title that showed how useful the engine was for indie developers.
”They sold a million units, and this is a small developer. So I think it’s not just up or down, but it’s also horizontal.”