Develop: Do you want to engage with the console manufacturers before their new systems come out? Do you want to influence them on hardware specifications?
Epic: Thats absolutely our plan. I cant say much more than that. Okay, lets say, a year ago that was our plan, and I cant tell you whether weve done it or not yet.
Our Samaritan concept, if you look at PC hardware in two or four years time, is something that the next consoles can achieve. It was just that no one knew what a next-generation game would look like so that was our idea, to show people what we can achieve.
I mean, The Samaritan is a real-time demo that looks like an animated movie from about five years ago the tech is getting that sophisticated. So our goal was to show off some of the technologies we would like to see on the next-gen platforms, and also to have The Samaritan as the benchmark. We believe what weve demonstrated is achievable at a reasonable development cost, so its what gamers should be demanding for next generation.
Weve shown that demonstration to about sixteen hardware manufacturers. Not just the console guys, but companies like Nvidia who give us feedback about how to deliver the tech more efficiently. I mean, thats the idea, a demonstration to start pushing everything forward.
Develop: Unreal Engine 3 has won three Develop Awards for Best Engine. Thats peer-voted. The industry decides who wins it.
Epic: And I cant tell you how much it means to us to get that level of recognition.
Develop: Is there anything you want to do differently for Unreal Engine 4?
Epic: Well, the thing is, what were doing with Unreal Engine now is a lot different to what we were doing about seven years ago when we first started using the tech. There was no Unreal Development Kit even four years ago, and I think its been real successful in getting people used to our technology.
Should we have done that from day one with UE3? Yeah, maybe.
Im not sure if were going to do it straight away with Unreal Engine 4, but if you look at what we do now with UE3 yknow, push a button and your game is built for mobiles we could have done that before and we didnt spend much time on it. How much that will figure into Unreal Engine 4 is up to us.
I would like to have a vertical solution for our tech to be useful for mobile projects and triple-A projects. In the past few years I think weve learned a lot about our technology and how it works for indie studios. How our tech works for iPhone games, for high-end triple-A studios and for a couple of guys who make a cool UDK game over the summer.
Were going to apply all these lessons weve learned with Unreal Engine 4, and I think youre going to see a lot of difference with UE3 within the first six months from launch.
And the other thing Ill call out; I want Unreal Engine 4 to be ready far earlier than UE3 was; not a year after the consoles are released. I think a year from a consoles launch is perfectly fine for releasing a game, but not for releasing new tech. We need to be there day one or very early. Thats my primary focus.
For us as a game-maker, we arent keen on shipping games day one because theres not much of an install-base, or at least not one as big as its going to be. But with engines, thats a different story. We want to deliver our tech as early as possible even though our first big marquee game might not be on there for twelve or even twenty-four months from a consoles launch.
