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Keighley: Epic says UE4 not targeted at Wii U on GTTV, Epic responds [Updated Again]

Effect

Member
and yet Capcom and EA have both released games using UE3. i guess a different question would be what does UE4 offer over CE3 which we know is up and running on Wii U?

Yes but what are they releasing their own games under now? Dragon's Dogma and the latest Street Fighter games are MT Framework games. As all all of Capcom's upcoming games. EA's upcoming games aren't using UE3 but Frostbite 2 or other custom engines.
 
lost-nosebleed-570x315.jpg

<3
 
So it will be PS4 and PC for me next-gen. I want to support the advancement of visual graphics technology. I really wish Gabe would release the Steambox. I'm willing to pay $899!
 

jmood88

Member
UE4 seems like a hard sell to me. You can either use UE3 which you're already familiar with and works everywhere or pay more money for UE4 which you need to learn and doesn't work on Nintendo.

Seems shitty to me. Especially when thinking about the money.

Since when is an engine needing to work on a Nintendo system important?
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
porting the current CoD engine to the Wii U would be easier than it was producing the Wii ports of COD titles or porting the engine to the PS3 was. if rumours are true, architecturally the Wii U is very similar to the 360.

I don't disagree, but you'd still be producing two SKUs with the current CoD sku being the one that would sell more at least initially based purely on user base #s with the Wii U, 360, PS3, and current non bleeding edge PCs. You'd essentially be creating a 2nd SKU using UE4 just for whatever the user base of the PS4/720/high end PCs would be at the time which would be the fraction of the former.

Frostbite 2 and Cryengine 3 wouldn't have this problem as it would work on all the platforms and scale up and down accordingly.
 

Ridley327

Member
Yes but what are they releasing their own games under now? Dragon's Dogma and the latest Street Fighter games are MT Framework games. As all all of Capcom's upcoming games. EA's upcoming games aren't using UE3 but Frostbite 2 or other custom engines.

I believe that SFxT is running on an upgraded version of the same engine that powered the SF4 titles; MvC3 is still their only fighting game that runs on MT Framework.
 
I'm not paying much attention to sales over the last couple of years. Has there been improvement in 3rd party title sales on the Wii? What's the reason behind this sudden push for 3rd party support for the Wii? Desire for cheap new consoles with CoD and stuff?
 
Yes but what are they releasing their own games under now? Dragon's Dogma and the latest Street Fighter games are MT Frame games. As all all of Capcom's upcoming games. EA's upcoming games aren't using UE3 but Frostbite 2 or other custom engines.

i'm not 100% familiar with what EA have in the pipeline, but they have put out a UE3 engine game as recently as Mass Effect 3. Capcom as recent as Asura's Wrath. Capcom have DMC in development which is UE3, so no, not 'ALL' of their upcaming games are MT Framework. Lost Planet 3 is UE3 after the first two were MT Framework.
 

StuBurns

Banned
I'm not paying much attention to sales over the last couple of years. Has there been improvement in 3rd party title sales on the Wii? What's the reason behind this sudden push for 3rd party support for the Wii? Desire for cheap new consoles?
Nintendo can't support a console on their own strongly in the first year. So they'll push third parties till they have all their own big stuff ready to go then it won't matter again.
 

neptunes

Member
Which middleware engine was used more?

Unreal Engine 3 during this generation?
Or
Renderware during the last generation?
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Since when is an engine needing to work on a Nintendo system important?

It's more the fact that the engine seems to be unscalable where as the competition seems to be scalable. It's not about the Wii-U as much as it's about the fact that if it won't work on the Wii-U it won't scale down to a ton of current PC setups as well as both the current HD consoles.

Your crazy if you think companies at least at 1st aren't going to still release SKUs for the PS3 and 360 when the 720/PS4 finally launch. If you go UE4 it appears the only way to still release for these platforms would be to create a different game.
 

Ryoku

Member
Whatever happened to the importance of scalability? Did Epic just throw that out of the window? I'm confident that it won't require alien technology, as it can run on Kepler cards at high settings.
 

sp3000

Member
I've never understood why people can simultaneously decry the huge increase in development costs and rationalisation of the industry into about three or four publishers as well as calling for huge power increases and $500 consoles.

Did everyone just fall asleep for the last five years? I'm not just talking about forum goers, but the remaining developers, too. A huge amount of devs were wiped out due to rising budgets and the black hole that created in the mid-tier marketplace.

Why is everyone still encouraging that environment?

This is an idiotic line of thinking.. Metro 2033 was made on a budget of less than 10 million and looks better than every single 100 million dollar blockbuster released. Same with Witcher 2 There is no correlation between graphics and dev costs. It costs much more money to optimize for insane architectures like the PS3 than it does to increase graphics.
 
It's more the fact that the engine seems to be unscalable where as the competition seems to be scalable. It's not about the Wii-U as much as it's about the fact that if it won't work on the Wii-U it won't scale down to a ton of current PC setups as well as both the current HD consoles.

Your crazy if you think companies at least at 1st aren't going to still release SKUs for the PS3 and 360 when the 720/PS4 finally launch. If you go UE4 it appears the only way to still release for these platforms would be to create a different game.

It might be scalable but it might require most of the new bells and whistles being turned off. Then That begs the question... what's the point? Especially since 3rd party software isn't exactly setting sales records on Nintendo platforms for a couple of generations now.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
UE4 seems like a hard sell to me. You can either use UE3 which you're already familiar with and works everywhere or pay more money for UE4 which you need to learn and doesn't work on Nintendo.

Seems shitty to me. Especially when thinking about the money.
The same could have been said of UE3 at the beginning of this generation in regards to sticking with UE2.

This is an idiotic line of thinking.. Metro 2033 was made on a budget of less than 10 million and looks better than every single 100 million dollar blockbuster released. Same with Witcher 2 There is no correlation between graphics and dev costs. It costs much more money to optimize for insane architectures like the PS3 than it does to increase graphics.
Metro is also horribly optimized and not all that great of a game to begin with.
 
It might be scalable but it might require most of the new bells and whistles being turned off. Then That begs the question... what's the point? Especially since 3rd party software isn't exactly setting sales records on Nintendo platforms for a couple of generations now.
the point would be creating a Wii U version for as cheaply as possible. the cheaper that is, the more likely it's worth doing.
 

Effect

Member
I believe that SFxT is running on an upgraded version of the same engine that powered the SF4 titles; MvC3 is still their only fighting game that runs on MT Framework.

Thanks. They are moving in the direction of using MT Framework with all of their games though.
 
This is an idiotic line of thinking.. Metro 2033 was made on a budget of less than 10 million and looks better than every single 100 million dollar blockbuster released. Same with Witcher 2 There is no correlation between graphics and dev costs. It costs much more money to optimize for insane architectures like the PS3 than it does to increase graphics.

FALSE! Uncharted Series cost $20 million each game, and hardly has any loading times and is generally consider one of if not the best looking games this gen on consoles.
 

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
The same could have been said of UE3 at the beginning of this generation in regards to sticking with UE2.


Metro is also horribly optimized and not all that great of a game to begin with.



Weird, runs on high settings on a 4 year old GPU just fine.

And the game was awesome, only games that come close in immersion are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (Obviously) and Bioshock.
 

chriskun

Member
This is an idiotic line of thinking.. Metro 2033 was made on a budget of less than 10 million and looks better than every single 100 million dollar blockbuster released. Same with Witcher 2 There is no correlation between graphics and dev costs. It costs much more money to optimize for insane architectures like the PS3 than it does to increase graphics.

This game was also made in Russia. Nothing against Russians, but I'm betting its way cheaper labor than it is here in America or Europe. Asset creation is what costs the real money anyways, anyone can have fancy textures effects, but the modeling and creation assets is what takes the most time.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
The same could have been said of UE3 at the beginning of this generation in regards to sticking with UE2.


Metro is also horribly optimized and not all that great of a game to begin with.

Would have been a bigger issue if more companies had stuff that worked on what we've gone down in terms of modern graphics arch. A ton of companies have stuff that will work because the logic behind things is on the same path. Last gen you didn't have a ton of companies using big engines like UE2 because things like the Cube and PS2 weren't designed in the way modern graphics tech evolved.

Now everything under the sun outside of the Wii and to a lesser extent the 3ds all run on the same basic ideas be it the 360 a PC the Vita or an iPad.

So the question will be for companies when to make the move to a new engine like UE4 if it won't work across all your currently targeted platforms, and why make a move to UE4 over other options like CryEngine 3 or Frostbite 2 if they DO work on all of your currently targeted platforms.
 

OryoN

Member
This will probably be my first AND last post on the topic.

It's just an engine, nothing more! The matter to be concerned about is the possibility that some software may exploit that engine to a degree that overwhelms the Wii U, to the point where scalling back certain details makes it look/feel like an entirely different game.

Because of the deminishing returns, I personally believe that hardware in the near future will have to be tremendously more powerful than Wii U for the above case to be possible. The famed 3-4x multiple just won't cut it. It's still a valid concern in some - albeit less major - ways.

In any event, it's really up to the developers whether or not they want their UE4 game to look like the original Pac Man, or the industry's next best-looking game - and everything in between.

For reasons stated above, the power of the Wii U - in relations to UE4 - might only matter on a per game basis. Whether the engine is eventually supported on Wii U, will come down to the feature set of the console(devs already stated it has modern features), and how agressively Epic is trying to push their new engine. IIRC, they already implied that they plan to support other platforms much sooner than they did with UE3 and it's eventual debut on mobile, so we'll see IF and where Wii U fits, in their forecast.

As it stands now, Epic may be in a tough situation. Even IF they plan to support Wii U, an early confirmation, puts them in a less favourable position to lobby console manufacturers(Sony, MS) to overcompensate on the performance of their upcoming systems. Just imagine...

MS & Sony: Why should we push for more power (= higher manufacturing cost), if we can already outperform Wii U which supports your UE4? To gain parity with PCs? The same PCs which will see more powerful GPUs every 6 freaking months? Really now, Epic!

That scenario wouldn't bode well for Epic, so for now, it seems like rather than just OFFICIALLY say "No Wii U"... they are doing a bit of damage-control with the whole "not announced for platforms beyond PC" statement. If you ask me, it seems like they are open to the possibility of future Wii U support.

To reiterate(for those who like to quote a sentence while ignoring content/context): UE4 support for Wii U would not surprise me at all - it's just an engine, afterall. It's the individual games and how far devs decide to exploit the engine that should be more of a concern.
 

wsippel

Banned
Thanks. They are moving in the direction of using MT Framework with all of their games though.
All games across all platforms. A single pipeline for everything. I'm not doubting UE4's improved workflow will save money, but this extreme level of scalability also saves a whole lot of time and money. Then again, most devs outside of Japan don't really give a shit about dedicated handhelds to begin with...
 
The same could have been said of UE3 at the beginning of this generation in regards to sticking with UE2.

Circa 2004, when Epic showed the first demos of UE3, they were targeting specs that were clearly in a reasonable range for 200W TDP consoles releasing in late 2005 and 2006.

It's not clear yet whether the same is true of UE4's current target specs, particularly if the rumors about a not-insignificant performance gap between PS4 and Durango prove true.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
All games across all platforms. A single pipeline for everything. I'm not doubting UE4's improved workflow will save money, but this extreme level of scalability also saves a whole lot of time and money. Then again, most devs outside of Japan don't really give a shit about dedicated handhelds to begin with...
MT Framework is already quite multiplatform though, with handheld system versions included as well. They even had a version on Wii, actually, used for the very nicely done Sengoku Basara 3 on PS3 and Wii, the MT FW Lite. And no, all platforms having some version of the engine supported doesn't mean all games can work on all platforms equally as they can have quite the gap in terms of features and power. See how iOS having some version of UE3 allowing developers to use the same process and work flow on those devices that they do on the PS360 doesn't also mean that any of the current iOS platforms can handle anything like even Unreal Tournament 3, one of the first UE3 titles (nevermind Batman), in terms of scale and visual complexity and what those demand out of the hardware. An engine is just that, the games themselves can be just as incompatible in the end.
 

StuBurns

Banned
It's not clear yet whether the same is true of UE4's current target specs, particularly if the rumors about a not-insignificant performance gap between PS4 and Durango prove true.
What's that rumour? Which is significantly better?

Not that it really matters. Epic will not release a UE4 that doesn't run on both of those systems. An engine is worthless without a destination.
 

chriskun

Member
Why is this a surprise??? Nintendo is using the exact same strategy hardware wise as they did with the Wii. People have already confirmed the Wii U is almost completely on par with the current gen consoles, of course it won't be able to run a next gen engine.
 

wsippel

Banned
MT Framework is already quite multiplatform though, with handheld versions as well. They even had a version on Wii, actually. And no, all platforms having some version of the engine doesn't mean all games can work on all platforms. Just as iOS having UE3 doesn't mean any of the current platforms can handle anything like even Unreal Tournament 3, one of the first UE3 titles.
Huh? I was talking about MT Framework. I'm well aware how well it scales and what it runs on. And I don't remember talking about porting individual games across all platforms, which is obviously hard or even impossible (well, not necessarily, as Capcom simply up-ports the 3DS or Wii versions to HD platforms ;) ), I was talking about saving money by having a single pipeline. Same tools for every project, very little or no retraining necessary if you move staff members from 3DS to PS360 or vice versa.
 

Instro

Member
What's that rumour? Which is significantly better?

Not that it really matters. Epic will not release a UE4 that doesn't run on both of those systems. An engine is worthless without a destination.

The next Xbox is said to be a step up from the PS4.
 
What's that rumour? Which is significantly better?

Not that it really matters. Epic will not release a UE4 that doesn't run on both of those systems. An engine is worthless without a destination.

Durango is supposedly significantly more powerful, though to be clear, both are reportedly closer in raw performance to each other than to Wii U.

Anyway, only running on one of those consoles isn't an option for Epic. The real question is this: To what extent will the less powerful of the two require Epic to compromise on some of the main features they're hyping for UE4, and after those compromises, will it still be able to produce significantly better results than UE3? Right now, UE4's main improvements over UE3 look to be tied to brute-force GPU horsepower, and that seems like a fairly risky thing to base a full-fledged new engine on.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Huh? I was talking about MT Framework. I'm well aware how well it scales and what it runs on. And I don't remember talking about porting individual games across all platforms, which is obviously hard or even impossible (well, not necessarily, as Capcom simply up-ports the 3DS or Wii versions to HD platforms ;) ), I was talking about saving money by having a single pipeline. Same tools for every project, very little or no retraining necessary if you move staff members from 3DS to PS360 or vice versa.
Guess I misunderstood the "all games across all platforms" bit, nevermind.
 

bjb

Banned
Why is this a surprise??? Nintendo is using the exact same strategy hardware wise as they did with the Wii. People have already confirmed the Wii U is almost completely on par with the current gen consoles, of course it won't be able to run a next gen engine.

While potentially true, you forgot that worshipers aren't typically very rational people.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
FALSE! Uncharted Series cost $20 million each game, and hardly has any loading times and is generally consider one of if not the best looking games this gen on consoles.

wat

I just played through U3 and Golden Abyss in the last year. The bold above isn't even close to true.
 
That's surprising to me. I'd have imagined a Kinect with every system forcing the budget down a little.

And supposedly, MS was going to go down precisely that road (which may have been the source of that "only 20% more powerful than Wii U" IGN rumor from months back), but pressure from Epic et al. led them to revise the specs significantly upward.

Supposedly.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Why is this a surprise??? Nintendo is using the exact same strategy hardware wise as they did with the Wii. People have already confirmed the Wii U is almost completely on par with the current gen consoles, of course it won't be able to run a next gen engine.

Except this isn't true at all.
 

StuBurns

Banned
And supposedly, MS was going to go down precisely that road (which may have been the source of that "only 20% more powerful than Wii U" IGN rumor from months back), but pressure from Epic et al. led them to revise the specs significantly upward.

Supposedly.
If true, rad.
 

StuBurns

Banned
I'm out of the loop rumour-wise, so I'll ask here I guess. Any rumours about the storage on the new systems? Either having SSDs? One of those hybrid HDD?

What next-gen needs is a serious improvement of user experience in terms of the disgustingly slow crawl into playing something.
 
The last rumor i heard had PS4 and the next x box close together , with next x box having more ram either way we will see when the time comes.

I don't think Wii U needs UE4 it's going to get allot of ports from PS3\360 and it depends on when PS4\Durango comes out .
There are whole bunch of factors in play here , like how long next gen going to last , how much Wii U sells among other things.
 

KageMaru

Member
Budgets would be one reason. Also do they have their own in house engines now or not would be a consideration that needs to be factored. People are assuming everyone would in time push aside what they have and just use UE4.

Capcom - MT Framework
EA- Frostbite 2 (they are using it for other games outside of Battelfied 3 I believe?)
Ubisoft - Anvil
Nintendo - Own internal engines
Sony - Various game engines based on series I think
THQ - Their own engines

Wouldn't it be better, more likely and more cost effective for them to continue to changing their own engines going forward and maybe taking what they want from UE4 instead of outright using UE4 straight up? Once they do that who is to say they wouldn't make sure themselves that the their engines continued to run on the Wii U gong forward in addition to newer systems? At that point wouldn't it be possible to have different versions of their engines for different systems?

You're right, plenty of studios/publishers have created what looks to be their next Gen engines (anvil next, frostbite 2, etc) but there are still plenty of studios who don't have the resources to do such a thing.

Middleware will still play a role next gen. We'll have to see how it all plays out. Just some of the reasoning in this thread doesn't make sense to me.

i wonder if you can move onto the new tools but still use the old engine. i have this hazy memory of the Bioshock devs saying they did something like that.

since the Wii U won't be running DX anything, what can't it do? genuine question. i know the generation of cards rumoured contained a tesselator, even if it was never really used outside of ATI graphics demos.

what are the big differences between SM4.1 and SM5? and does the backwards compatibility of DX11 to DX10 parts (as we saw on PC with Alien Vs Predator where you can run the DX11 code path on DX10 cards, albeit without the DX11 graphical enhancements) potentially come into play outside of the Direct X spec?

missing out on UE4 would be a big problem for the Wii U, so i hope it isn't true, but certainly if UE4 requires DX11 the rumoured basis for the gpu in the Wii U isn't a DX11 part.

The hardware may be based on DX specs but the APIs for the systems is not.
 

jdmonmou

Member
I don't understand Nintendo's strategy behind releasing an underpowered system for the next-gen that won't be able to compete on a technical level with the next Xbox and Playstation. It seems like they're betting that this system can become the pop-cultural phenomenon that the Wii was because it has a fancy tablet controller. However, they fail to realize that in addition to their stellar line up of first party software, they need to strive to be the premiere system for third party software. They gave lip service to having a lot of third party support at last year's E3 conference, but how long will it last once the competitors release their systems.

Wii has some good games this generation, but it comes nowhere near close to the library that the 360 and Playstation 3 have. If Wii U can't do the technical things that the next Playstation and Xbox can do, then developers will focus their attention on those platforms and forget about the Wii U. This is the reason why I haven't owned a Nintendo home console since the Nintendo 64 (not enough games).
 
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