In an epic interview with GamaSutra’s Brandon Sheffield and Christian Nutt, Epic Game’s VP and key creator of the Unreal Engine Mark Rein went into detail about Unreal Tournament 3 and other official UE3 licensee titles.

Among other useful niblets of information, Mr. Rein highlights the importance of Sony consoles this holiday season, stating, “I think Sony’s going to have a good Christmas this year. Games like Unreal Tournament 3 will hopefully get out the door.”

Coming from PC roots, Mark realizes that user generated content plays host to some of the most memorable experiences ever created. When asked about the difference between the Unreal Tournament 3 map system and Little Big Planet, he went on to say:

CN: I bet they’re going to police LittleBigPlanet and other stuff.

MR: Well, LittleBigPlanet is more of an example of rearranging chairs on the deck, right?

CN: It’s pretty robust.

MR: This is the real thing. You can’t import your own models in LittleBigPlanet. You can’t write script code in LittleBigPlanet.

That’s all well and good, but what about the problems with the PS3’s development cycle? Brandon Sheffield went on to ask:

BS: Do you think Unreal Engine 3 running on the PS3 now is going to help people surmount the difficulties they’ve been having?
MR: I think that’s generally how it works. That’s part of the reason why we build a game — to prove out the technology, and iron all the kinks out of it and make it good. As I’ve said before, a year after the Xbox 360 was on the market, we had a really good game — Gears of War — and that kind of became version 1.0 of Unreal Engine 3 for the Xbox 360. That became a roadmap. It was well-optimized, and licensees could go look at that code. We released it so they could say, “If I want to do at least what Epic’s doing with Unreal Engine 3 and get that kind of framerate and performance and visual look or move some of those levers up and down to be different, I can do that.”

I think it’s the same thing with Unreal Tournament [3 on PS3] so absolutely. I think now, people can see, “Okay, they’ve got the engine running with this much content.” Everybody’s mileage varies, because not everybody’s making the same game. But, “They have the engine running with this many characters, explosions, and vehicles, and the level’s this size, and if I follow that idea, I can get that kind of performance, and if I do less of this, I can do more of that. If I do more of this, I can do less than that.” So, absolutely, I think we’re at that kind of version 1.0 on PlayStation 3 a year after the PlayStation 3 shipped, the same way we were with Xbox 360 a year after the Xbox 360 shipped. That was a pretty predictable thing, and was what we expected that was going to occur and what we’ve been telling people.

In addition to all of this, Mark Rein went on to comment about the relevancy of the Blu-ray player in the PS3:

CN: The 40-gig PS3 has been out in Europe for a little while now, and the numbers shot way up.

MR: Well, good for Sony. When I said they were going to have a good Christmas, I didn’t necessarily mean because of our game. They’ve got a lot going for them right now. It’s a great Blu-ray player. They’re going to push that really hard.
BS: I got Phil Harrison to admit that the PS2 was not the best DVD player in the past, but the PS3 is a great Blu-ray player.

MR: And a great DVD player, too. They did a really good job on that. It really feels like it was designed for that kind of thing.

CN: They do that multimedia thing…

MR: But it can confuse people.

Mark Rein has always been an outspoken character, rivaled only by Cliffy B in terms of press coverage. It’s refreshing to see this level of candor, given the frequent stonewalling we get from most developers. This may be indicative of the fact that Epic Games is an independent company, and most development teams seem to enjoy the financial umbrella provided by larger companies such as EA or Activision.

While we hope this will be a prelude of things to come such that all developers will want to express their opinions without an army of PR and marketing agents at their side, we won’t hold our breath.

via GamaSutra

Tags: Gamasutra-Interview-Mark-Rein, Interview-Mark-Rein, Mark-Rein, Sony, UE3, Unreal-Tournament-3

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3 Comments » 3sicasity on November 28, 2007 8:20 pm i doubt it. The only good game is uncharted. Assasins and COD4 sucked on the ps3, and unreal is better fr the ps3. With hyped games such as lair and ratchet flopping in sales, ps3 will fail. sertz on November 28, 2007 8:40 pm Not sure where exactly you got your information from 3sicasity, but the games you mentioned are great on Ps3. If you watched online videos rather than play the game on the system itself you shouldn’t make a comment like that… I have Assassin’s Creed and COD4 on ps3, and Assassin’s Creed has no more frame rate hiccups than my friends 360 version, the graphics themselves are just as detailed, and the game runs great (minus the freezing issues both 360 and ps3 users have been reporting, and admittedly, I have also experienced). With the patch though it can only get better. As for COD4? It’s straight up better on Ps3. There are less frame rate hiccups in the Ps3 version than on the 360, and the multi-player is silky smooth and supports more people on the Ps3 version. It is more or less the same game and honestly you’d be nitpicking saying the things I’m saying right now about the frame rate, but its absolutely true the Ps3 version is smoother and better looking. Last point I wanted to make was about the “no good games on Ps3″ comment that your post was alluding to. This completely depends on the kind of games you play, but at the same time, I can list off 11 games that any gamer would be happy with: Ninja Gaiden: Sigma Motorstorm (exclusive) Resistance: Fall Of Man (exclusive) Call Of Duty 4 Assassin’s Creed Guitar Hero III Heavenly Sword (exclusive) Virtua Fighter 5 Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (exclusive) Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GOTY edition Warhawk (exclusive) Ratchet and Clank Future: ToD (exclusive) So there you go, 11 games, 6 of which are exclusive to the platform, that are great buys on the Ps3. It’s only going to get better with time, just as it did with the Xbox 360 and hopefully will the Wii. Also, with trends in the market being any indication (barred the unexpected and premature posts on ripten itself about Ps3 sales) than the Ps3 is starting to gain steam again, even outselling the mighty Wii in Japan, and increasing sales all across the board, it won’t “fail”. At best it will win this console war, and at worst it will slightly outsell the Xbox 360. To me? Thats a win-win. bluejet on November 28, 2007 8:44 pm HaHaHa lol@ 3sicasity your an idiot! RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.