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Microsoft chooses Unreal 3 engine for next generation games

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GDC 2005: MICROSOFT CHOOSES UNREAL ENGINE 3 FOR NEXT-GEN
By Quinton Miles

Epic Games and Microsoft Game Studios announced this afternoon that all in-house next generation Xbox titles will be developed by Epic's Unreal Engine 3. By using the highly touted engine, Microsoft Game Studios claims they will truly be able to exploit the hardware features of the new console and harness the power at their disposal.

"We only work with the best partners and utilize the best technologies, and Epic and the Unreal Engine 3 hit the mark on both those fronts," said Shane Kim, General Manager, Microsoft Game Studios. "Our teams are creating incredible games and content for the next generation Xbox platform, and by integrating Unreal Engine 3 into our development infrastructure we are able to really maximize our teams' performance and deliver the quality content and creativity that the market has come to expect from us."

"We are hugely excited that Microsoft Game Studios have selected Unreal Engine 3 for its next generation Xbox platform games," says Mark Rein, vice president at Epic. "It's an opportunity for us to show the industry the true capabilities of our tools and technologies and is a testament to the incredible amount of hard work by our teams here to deliver tools and technologies that are 100% tuned into the needs of next generation development. It further demonstrates our ability to deliver the most flexible, most productive tools and technology in the market today."

Microsoft Game Studios is the second developer to publicly announce using the Unreal Engine 3, with Midway being the first.
 
Funny, isn't Epic in bed with Nvidia with all the 'designed for Nvidia' bullshit?

Does that have any business ramification whatsoever on the fact that Xbox has an ATI chip?

Of course it'll still work, though might be a little itty bitty less technically optimized. But is Nvidia gonna freak out if this partnership/licensing is further emphasized between Microsoft (ATI) and Epic?
 
Juice said:
Funny, isn't Epic in bed with Nvidia with all the 'designed for Nvidia' bullshit?

Does that have any business ramification whatsoever on the fact that Xbox has an ATI chip?

Of course it'll still work, though might be a little itty bitty less technically optimized. But is Nvidia gonna freak out if this partnership/licensing is further emphasized between Microsoft (ATI) and Epic?
Click to expand...

Yup, Intel and Nvidia are hating life right now.
:lol
 
This is good news. Less time fussing around making an engine = more time to make kickass Halo 3 (and Perfect Dark!).
 
VictimOfGrief said:
Yup, Intel and Nvidia are hating life right now.
:lol
Click to expand...

I must have missed the part where EPIC became owned by Microsoft here and can only provide middleware for them... even though the PR specifically states Midway is also using it :lol

1) Can you imagine how much money EPIC is going to get?

2) I wonder if Mr Carmack is pissed about this?

3) This makes you think maybe EPIC knew a little more about what they were talking about with saying this next generation could be RAM constrained.

4) EA & Criterion AM CRYING
 
Seems lazy to me.

Surely a new engine built up around the strengths and weaknesses of the next gen consoles would be superior to an old engine ported from PC's?.
 
A bit surprised by this deal. Not saying it bad or anything (quite the opposite actually) just a bit surprising. I mean, MS is the software company after all, you'd expect they would make their own engines and whatnot. I guess with next gen hardware and engine like UT3 it won't even matter what type of visuals you need (cartoony, realistic, whatever) the engine will be able to support it as long as you can make art assets.

Yup, Intel and Nvidia are hating life right now.
Click to expand...
nVidia is settled more than fine with PS3 deal, and intel probably doesn't care about high end graphics market anyways.
 
DemonCleaner said:
does "all inhouse" nclude rare?
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I hope it doesnt, Rare still create the best looking console games. YEah U3 engine can pull off some amazing detail, but i believe Rare posses the talent to do better.

If true I guess Rare will probably push it the furthest compared to other studios Anyway, GET U3 engine to Big Blue BOX ASAP!

Fable 2 goddamit!
 
dark10x said:
I'd rather have Bungie stick with their own technology for their next title...
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I think the whole point of this is to cut costs and time, so that the devs can focus on making a quality games. Looks like all or many MS titles will be using this engine.
 
Is the U3 engine flexible enough for a game like ... huh .... Forza 2 ? sounds like a strange news to me.
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Good question. I think it is. Much like the renderware engine can get you a game like GTA and a game like Winning Eleven.

It will eventually get to the point where it doesn't make much sense for a team to develop an engine except maybe if they want something truly special looking and maybe to squeeze some extra performance. Even then, they can perhaps just tweak the engine, write extra shaders etc.

Think about it this way: 3D animation studios usually don't write their own rendering software. They use what's out there. Few times you have counterexamples, like Pixar who write their own shaders, but even they use standardized platform (abeit their platform they made themselves).
 
dark10x said:
I'd rather have Bungie stick with their own technology for their next title...
Click to expand...

i agree, unreal engine games have NEVER ever had good framerates.. not even on monster pc:s.
 
The Faceless Master said:
didnt people make a racer with whatever engine UT2K4 uses?
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It doesn't matter. Get ready for Project Gotham Shooting, Top Spin Shooting, and a culinary puzzle shooter with English/Italian/German voice recognition for the token "quirky" entry.
 
Hmmm...not sure what to think here...

Either Epic has really spent time optimizing their engine for the new Xbox, Microsoft got lazy, or there are going to be many much better looking games for the new Xbox than those coming out of MGS.

I wonder how this is going to work for non first person shooter games.
 
Marconelly said:
Good question. I think it is. Much like the renderware engine can get you a game like GTA and a game like Winning Eleven.

It will eventually get to the point where it doesn't make much sense for a team to develop an engine except maybe if they want something truly special looking and maybe to squeeze some extra performance. Even then, they can perhaps just tweak the engine, write extra shaders etc.

Think about it this way: 3D animation studios usually don't write their own rendering software. They use what's out there. Few times you have counterexamples, like Pixar who write their own shaders, but even they use standardized platform (abeit their platform they made themselves).
Click to expand...

I agree. The engine is perfectly flexible enough. It seems like the industry is finally getting to a place where creators can simply choose the "best of breed" tools to make the game that they want. I'll take graphics from here, physics from there, as opposed to either having to make it all themselves or reusing some proprietary pieces that have legacy components that you have to mold your code to.

And, this is EPIC's business. They will provide ongoing development with regular upgrades of the underlying implementations, along with new API's (while still supporting the old), such that the graphics will only get better without the developer putting in nearly as much effort. Hell, they could basically recompile their code six months later and have a heck of a better looking game.
 
goomba said:
Seems lazy to me.

Surely a new engine built up around the strengths and weaknesses of the next gen consoles would be superior to an old engine ported from PC's?.
Click to expand...

There isn't a single UE3 powered game on the market, how the shit is it "old"?
 
Not all MGS games will use the engine, it's just available as an option now.

And I'm sure Epic are providing an optimised engine for Xbox2, like they did with the UE2 tech for Xbox.
 
gofreak said:
Not all MGS games will use the engine, it's just available as an option now.
Click to expand...

"Epic Games and Microsoft Game Studios announced this afternoon that all in-house next generation Xbox titles will be developed by Epic's Unreal Engine 3."

?
 
I just posted this a minute ago, but it really belongs here:

[All Microsoft studios using Unreal] does make the whole XNA thing a little funny though. They're making it a big deal, but they've passed on their whole graphics work to Middleware that will most likely not use XNA because it's going to need to get to the metal as much as possible. It will still use DirectX, of course, but by using the Unreal Engine, Microsoft will internally rarely be making any XNA API calls themselves. Just kind of funny how that works out.

With this whole trend towards middleware, where does XNA stand? You've got Criterions engine, Unreals, ID's,etc and it would be tough for developers to make a better engine, especially since all previous console engines were designed specifically for a those consoles and that goes out the window, and they have to start over from scratch.

I know XNA is more than just the graphical engine, but Criterion (and others) already has audio engines, input engines, we've just seen the physics engine, etc. I know for sure that there are multiple IP engines out there, both for voice packeting as well as data compression/flow.
 
SpokkX said:
i agree, unreal engine games have NEVER ever had good framerates.. not even on monster pc:s.
Click to expand...

It's not even about the framerate...

I'd imagine that, if they use UE3, there WILL be loading between each map. I do not wish to return to this format. Bungie was able to load new pieces of Halo 2 on the fly, and although there were a few flaws, it mostly worked out great. Most would claim that Source is a superior engine, but I felt that Halo 2's engine provided a much more enjoyable experience smiply due to the fact that it was able to give us continuous gameplay.
 
um, why are people making negative speculative guesses about things like map loading and flexibility of the U3 engine??

You'd be surprised at some of the adaptions made by some companies to their own game engines (e.g: Fps engines) to suit other games (Sports games, rally games, etc)

"With this whole trend towards middleware, where does XNA stand?"
Click to expand...

XNA as an IDE suite- use U3 as a plug in?
 
dark10x said:
It's not even about the framerate...

I'd imagine that, if they use UE3, there WILL be loading between each map. I do not wish to return to this format. Bungie was able to load new pieces of Halo 2 on the fly, and although there were a few flaws, it mostly worked out great. Most would claim that Source is a superior engine, but I felt that Halo 2's engine provided a much more enjoyable experience smiply due to the fact that it was able to give us continuous gameplay.
Click to expand...

IMO, any engine that has excessive loading automatically disqualifies it as being good. Halo 2 might have not been my favorite game of last year (or even my favorite FPS), but it sure as hell did have an excellent engine (even with the normal maps not loading quick enough on the models).
 
Interesting move, though who does it actually affect?

Bungie, Day one(or is it FASA, i always forget), Japanese studios maybe, maybe Rare....who else is in house?
 
I doubt MS is gonna use an engine that will compromise their game development. I just hope sonycowboy is wrong about that API call stuff for UE3. I would have assumed the engine would have been optimized for Xenon hardware. Why would MS choose and engine that doesn't even exploit the tools they made for the hardware? PEACE.
 
dark10x said:
It's not even about the framerate...

I'd imagine that, if they use UE3, there WILL be loading between each map. I do not wish to return to this format. Bungie was able to load new pieces of Halo 2 on the fly, and although there were a few flaws, it mostly worked out great. Most would claim that Source is a superior engine, but I felt that Halo 2's engine provided a much more enjoyable experience smiply due to the fact that it was able to give us continuous gameplay.
Click to expand...

"2005-01-01
- Unreal Engine 3 has been updated to support large worlds, with seamless loading between multiple maps and streaming of content. No, we're not making a city driving game, or a massively-multiplayer game -- but our licensees are!"

http://udn.epicgames.com/Main/WebHome
 
It's good for cutting dev. cost. I really hope the blockbuster games goes with custom code. It's the only way to achieve the original design correctly.
 
"DCharlie: XNA ins't an IDE suite: XNA Studio is."

thanks for the correction - i was referring to XNA Studio i guess!
 
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