Epic's Mark Rein pleased with Blu-ray's 'legroom'

Much like a psychotic chainsaw killer, Epic vice president Mark Rein has expressed satisfaction with being given more room to store all those legs. While talking up first-person fragger Unreal Tournament 3 at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Rein praised the PlayStation 3 disc format's large storage capacity, noting that "we may have fewer maps on the 360 version...Blu-ray has definitely given us a lot of legroom."

Of course, as Xbox 360 developers are wont to do, Rein applied some damage control on the Epic Games forums, explaining how disappointed he was that "folks on the internet treat any positive thing we say about one platform as some sort of critique of another platform." While ruling out the possibility of two DVDs for the eventual Xbox 360 version of Unreal Tournament 3, Rein suggested that online downloads and hard drives could sort out glaring content deficiencies between platforms.

And before you ask about mod support for Microsoft's console: "We just don't have all the answers today and it isn't our chief priority at this very moment because we already have our hands completely full shipping UT3 on PC and PS3 as well as shipping Gears of War on PC."

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Read -- "EIF: Rein's a Blu-ray fan" (GamesIndustry.Biz)
Read -- Is the 360 version limited?

Reader Comments (114)

Your most likely on point about that.

But then you can't really say EA is being platform agnostic if they are willingly pushing one version over the other. It's being done in a different way than Epic is but it's still favoring one console over the other.

Well, I view it as favoring half price marketing over paying for it yourself. It's all part of profitability for EA.

Epic...I don't know. I really don't. I don't plan on playing Unreal Tournament 3 anyway, because I bought Gears of War and frankly, I don't get what people like about it.

So, I don't plan on buying their future games until I've at least played a demo. I also don't play competitive online FPSes much anymore (although I'm looking forward to Quake 3 on XBLA), so that kind of drops it into the below the bargain bin prices before I'd even pick up UT3.

But man, when Rein says something, sometimes you just have to stand back and look at him and think..."seriously, what the fuck is this guy smoking?"

xBots are going to have a fit when MGS4 and FF13 clock in at 45+ gb... that would take at least 6 DVD9s on the 360 with redundant content on the separate discs. In the case of MGS4, they always use the game engine to render the cutscenes.

Heck, GTA4 is going to come in on multiple DVD9s and HDD required for 360.

Uh, how do you figure? 45GB of what, exactly? Not even PC games- you know, the games that have pretty much no limitations- are reaching those insanely stupid amounts of memory over all their discs, no matter how many they may have.

Oh, and all games use the game engine to render cut-scenes, smart one.

Well most games- all current gen games.

If it's not a weekly story about Michael Pachter, it's Mark Rein. I'm really getting tired of hearing about everything little comment this guy makes. Have we learned from David Jaffe?

Over-exposure is not always a good thing.

And if he doesn't want people to get upset about what he's saying, then maybe he should keep his mouth shut and concentrate on making good games and an engine that works.

You know, it's nice and all that Mark Rein and other developers are happy about the disc space of the blu-ray that's good for them. But if all they're going to use it for is extra levels(or audio samples), then I'm not worried about Blu-ray. Until game developers make games that are only possible on the blu-ray, then Microsoft has really nothing to worry about.

the only physical media that is really going to matter in the imminent future is the HDD. Hard Disk Drive.

it's super ironic to me that Sony has already made Blu-Ray's successor such a commodity by making it so easy to replace hard drives inside the PS3, and Microsoft has made it's future savior so expensive and conditional. don't expect that to last.

.

As longs as connection speeds are slow, pure hdd gaming will be a minority. And frankly I would still think people would want at least an option for disk media.

@ phattie

Where does it actually say that GTAIV for the 360 will be on multiple discs?

And why does it matter to you? It doesn't bother me. It won't kill me to get up for 30 SECONDS and change a disc.

Last but not least this is just more bluray propaganda. If all you sony fanboys can talk about is how bluray will be required for extra maps, weather changes, and music then you're in serious need of help.

Those things aren't that crucial. And its called DLC.

Hes a fatty (his name even implies it). He can't change a disc, let alone get off the couch.

I think its time for a Jerry Springer interview...

I bet you'll have a problem with getting up and changing the disc for 30 seconds when you have to do it whenever you cross bridges into other islands on GTAIV.

What's that? A 30+ second load time? Yeah...that sucks.

Oh comeon do you really think that's going to happen? Or is that the fanboy in you talking?

Umm on 360 DLC costs money so if it was on a Blu-ray it would be part of the game and cost nothing extra if it is DLC for you 360 boys then it costs you extra cash also you guys are playing the same price as us PS3 boys for the game yet you gotaa Download some extra we get for freee now does they REALLY seem fair to you think about it for once.

Epic's Mark Rein pleased with Blu-ray's 'legroom'

Reader Comments (114)

Posted: Aug 15th 2007 7:27PM cc123 said

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