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Epic Games: Large number of major next-gen games using UE4; start around Winter 2014

Mike Gamble knows things. As Epic Games’ EU territory manager he’s privy to a plethora of yet-to-be revealed PS4, Xbox One and PC games powered by his company’s popular Unreal Engine, and has seen and worked with major new titles slated for release as far forward as spring 2015.

Epic counts Microsoft, Irrational, Ninja Theory, Arkane, Gearbox, Firaxis, BioWare, Rocksteady and many more as its clients, but it’s not giving up game development itself just yet. First announced at the end of 2011, Fortnite is Epic’s own UE4 game, but the developer has been strangely quiet about it ever since.
“There haven’t really been any announcements of the games still under wraps [that use UE4] – as soon as they start going live, then you’ll see suddenly see that we’re everywhere again,” he tells us. “You’ll be thoroughly sick of us!”

There will be announcements from Epic at GDC this year, Gamble confirms, and the expected generational leap in visuals on console is coming for real soon after, he says. And he should know. “It’ll happen this year, toward the Christmas period,” he tells us. “Knowing the games that are in development, there are some crackers. The first quarter of 2015 is also where a lot of them seem to be aiming. This year there seems to be alot of cross-gen, but that’s publishers and developers being safe, isn’t it? It’s still a good revenue stream.”
One might expect that risk-averse approach to continue through the PS4 and Xbox One generation, given the cost of developing games right now. But Gamble says that’s not the case – of the games he’s seen, he says the split between existing series and new IP is “at least 50/50 – if not 70/30 in favor of new stuff,” with several studios putting out franchise updates in order to finance original games. “There’s a lot of buffering,” says Gamble. “A lot of studios are doing a franchise iteration /and/ a new IP.”

http://www.edge-online.com/features...r-support-and-more-incoming-says-mike-gamble/
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I feel the engine's main struggle has been that it couldn't handle cross-gen, so the games having to wait until at least Fall 2014 doesn't surprise me.

I expect UE5 to be cross-gen in response or to just turn into a continually updated featureset that gets rebranded a la CryEngine. It's not worth the risk of losing developers in transition.
 
yet to be revealed new games? And coming out in Spring 2015?

good good


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I guess it will be more easier to use UE4 for this gen compared to the last
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
To note, the first bolding is not who is using Unreal Engine 4. BioWare is 100% Frostbite these days and Arkane Austin at least is on CryEngine.
 

Orca

Member
The first quarter of 2015 is also where a lot of them seem to be aiming.

Didn't that Nostradamus say there's no games in 2015 because publishers are worried the consoles will fail? :)
 

Logash

Member
Happy about this. I'm not sure how well UE4 downgrades to last gen and hopefully that means more original games for current gen. 2013 was definitely exciting but 2014 is all about the software. Bring it on!
 

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
I wonder what's going on at Epic. Why would they sell their biggest IP they own away? Why not develop it in house (I know there were a ton of departures, but still)?

I mean I'm sure MS is happy to get the IP rights to GoW and Epic is happy to get that truckload of money but...huh.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Sounds like a perfect engine to me. I'm tired of developers dialing back graphics and features to shoehorn their "nextgen" games on PS360.

That's pretty much the bet they're making.

They put DX11 features into UE3 so it could be the cross-gen engine for 2013 and early 2014 (and they have a lot of next-gen games on that), but aimed to get high ranking next-gen status by building from the ground up for it.
 
I wonder what's going on at Epic. Why would they sell their biggest IP they own away? Why not develop it in house (I know there were a ton of departures, but still)?

I mean I'm sure MS is happy to get the IP rights to GoW and Epic is happy to get that truckload of money but...huh.
They might just be tired of working on it.
 

Harp

Member
I really hope to see more engines used this generation. Cryengine looks to have a lot of potential in lighting and IQ.

I hope epic provided better support for unreal engine 4. Because so many games on unreal 3 and all the games that were still using unreal 2.5. While they had a good base the engine did not alot of games to feel unique.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I wonder what's going on at Epic. Why would they sell their biggest IP they own away? Why not develop it in house (I know there were a ton of departures, but still)?

I mean I'm sure MS is happy to get the IP rights to GoW and Epic is happy to get that truckload of money but...huh.
It's part of an overall strategy shift at Epic.

Basically Tim Sweeney (and some of the other staff) decided that they didn't want to balloon up to a size necessary to support AAAA blockbusters this generation with 200-300+ person teams, so they've decided to become a games as a service company and make multiplayer focused titles.

This is why they're making Fortnite (f2p Minecraft/Terraria like game) and an online competitive progression/economy based shooter (that I assume is also a digital service).

To further this goal, they went and got a $330 million investment from Tencent, who you will best know from publishing games like League of Legends that fit this model.

Since they no longer have a use for an IP like Gears, getting a cash infusion from Microsoft and essentially tying them up even more directly as an Unreal Engine 4 licensee was seen as more valuable.

Prior to the staff who wanted to work on more campaign-focused games leaving, they were working on a (canceled) successor series to Gears that you can see here, but it represents where they were headed as opposed to where they are going now: http://www.vgleaks.com/project-nano-aka-blueprint-from-epic-games-unveiled/
 

ironcreed

Banned
It's part of an overall strategy shift at Epic.

Basically Tim Sweeney (and some of the other staff) decided that they didn't want to balloon up to a size necessary to support AAAA blockbusters this generation with 200-300+ person teams, so they've decided to become a games as a service company and make multiplayer focused titles.

This is why they're making Fortnite (f2p Minecraft/Terraria like game) and an online competitive progressive based shooter (that I assume is also a digital service).

To further this goal, they went and got a $330 million investment from Tencent, who you will best know from publishing games like League of Legends that fit this model.

Since they no longer have a use for an IP like Gears, getting a cash infusion from Microsoft and essentially tying them up even more directly as an Unreal Engine 4 licensee was seen as more valuable.

Prior to the staff who wanted to work on more campaign-focused games leaving, they were working on a successor series to Gears that you can see here, but it represents where they were headed as opposed to where they are going now: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=710612

Actually quite smart from a business perspective. They are positioned to be raking it in.
 

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
It's part of an overall strategy shift at Epic.

Basically Tim Sweeney (and some of the other staff) decided that they didn't want to balloon up to a size necessary to support AAAA blockbusters this generation with 200-300+ person teams, so they've decided to become a games as a service company and make multiplayer focused titles.

This is why they're making Fortnite (f2p Minecraft/Terraria like game) and an online competitive progression/economy based shooter (that I assume is also a digital service).

To further this goal, they went and got a $330 million investment from Tencent, who you will best know from publishing games like League of Legends that fit this model.

Since they no longer have a use for an IP like Gears, getting a cash infusion from Microsoft and essentially tying them up even more directly as an Unreal Engine 4 licensee was seen as more valuable.

Prior to the staff who wanted to work on more campaign-focused games leaving, they were working on a (canceled) successor series to Gears that you can see here, but it represents where they were headed as opposed to where they are going now: http://www.vgleaks.com/project-nano-aka-blueprint-from-epic-games-unveiled/

Ah, that does make a lot more sense then. Didn't really know too much about their strategy shift other than all those departures. Thanks!
 

TyrantII

Member
They have an uphill battle. That said capcom, konami, and others would be smart to use them while they reorganise.

Seems engines used to be game specific. Then it got too costly and Unreal / Source / ID was there along with a littany of middleware. Now that big publisher got their pants back on they're developing their own solutions and leveraging them across all their products, like they should have when the engine per game paradigm dried up.
 

desu

Member
I was just recently wondering what has happened to UE4, because they haven't really shown anything off in quite a while, while there are more and more titles on Frostbite and even Cryengine.

A long list of big names in the game industry is fine, but that does not neccessarily mean they all have actual titles in development, or that they will ever release anything based on UE4.

I wonder when they will make their move to make UE4 available to the public, maybe at GDC? I've been recently looking at engines and basically the only next gen engine that is available to the public seems to be Cryengine and I feel they are missing the opportunity here.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Ah, that does make a lot more sense then. Didn't really know too much about their strategy shift other than all those departures. Thanks!

They really haven't mentioned it too publicly outside of a few articles on industry sites so it's very easy to miss.
 

jimi_dini

Member
Yeah, and all Unreal engine games look the same.

Really sick of alot of developers using this engine.

I'm personally also sick of buggy Unreal Engine games, especially that strange lock up issue that is quite common at least on PS3. Had various UE3 games lock up after some hours of play time. And it happens all the time.

For example Alpha Protocol, Enslaved, Lollipop Chainsaw, Dishonored, Alice. I also had a really weird lock up issue in Batman Arkham Asylum for the last (secret?) pickup, which happens all the time. I was kinda lucky that it wasn't needed for the 100% trophy. And that horrible loading. So many UE3 titles are showing loading screens almost constantly.

And then that typical UE3 terrible texture on startup issue (tm). I really don't understand why they couldn't just load the textures BEFORE showing a scene. Instead we get terrible textures for some seconds after a 15 second loading screen until the actual textures are loaded into memory. It's extremely horrible for almost all the games I mentioned before.

Unreal Engine 3 is a reason for me to not buy a game. I'm quite happy that loads of developers created their own engines.
 
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