Unreal Engine 4 to 'exclusively target the next console generation'

by Christopher Grant on Mar 13th 2008 1:15PM

The video game industry has no shortage of brilliant, outspoken thinkers and Epic CEO (and Unreal Engine guru) Tim Sweeney is no exception. In a previous installment of his interview with TG Daily, Sweeney said the PC wasn't a good platform for gaming and in this final installment he reveals that Unreal Engine 4 "will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft's successor for the Xbox 360, Sony's successor for the PlayStation 3 – and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs, then that also." Where does that leave the poor, struggling PC gaming platform? Sweeney says, "PCs will follow after that." Ooh, dissed.

While he's not exactly dishing out granular details on the next major iteration of their ubiquitous engine – after all, he did just show us the latest upgrades for Unreal Engine 3 at GDC – Sweeney did share a big picture outlook on the direction of the engine: "scaling to lots and lots of cores." Using the number of cores in the Xbox 360 as a starting point, Sweeney busts out Moore's Law to determine "that around 2010 ... you can put tens of CPU cores on one processor chip and you will have a perfectly usable uniform computing environment." What if he used the PlayStation 3's seven synergistic processing elements as a starting point? The mind staggers ...

Source

Tags: Epic, Tim-Sweeney, UE4, Unreal-Engine-4

Reader Comments (66)

Epic has forgotten it's roots. Then again, Epic's PC fans haven't been buying their games as much (at least, not in NA), so I guess they are just returning the favor.

It's too bad though... Unreal 3 engine has produced some pretty visually astounding games on PC so far, and in the end, I don't really understand why they'd have to target consoles specifically, because I can't see how the "next generation" of consoles will be all that different from PC's... if anything, they should be more similar to PC's than the current consoles are, and that's pretty close.

Maybe they are just trying to avoid the mess that was the PS3 port of Unreal Engine 3, or the problems the Silicon Knights claim to have had?

Or they're just following the market.

Or they are still Butt hurt over the fact there formulaic shit no longer sells to the PC market. But the brain dead console gamers still eat that shit up!

Here is the thing, people only use the unreal engine, and pay epic money, because it is cheaper and easier then making there own engine. If epic pulls this they just cut off a revenue stream and makes devs write there own engines. In a way this may actually be a good thing, instead of shoehorning what they want to do into epics limited engine, they can design around what they want to do. Means longer dev times, but may just be worth it.

I'm going to have to disagree, Ralod. If game engines were suddenly off the market, it would be a terrible thing, for both devs and consumers. Devs would have a harder time making solid games, it would take more time and money for them, and consumers would end up paying more and waiting longer for top-tier titles.

And aside from Silicon Knights' bogus claims, I've not heard one peep of developers not being able to tailor the Unreal Engine to fit their needs. How do you figure that the use of Unreal 3 "shoehorns" game design into certain predetermined slots?

Aside from Silicon Knights, who really are just looking for someone to blame for their shitty game, other devs have talked some issues with the unreal 3 engine but not to a major extent.

What I meant to infer was that if a dev has to write their own engine it seems it would be much easier to tailor that engine to do exactly what they want it to do. Lets be honest here, Epic will go back on this and they will develop an engine just as robust for the PC as they do for the "next next gen" or whatever of consoles. It's money in their pockets even if their games fail. And even if epic does not someone else will create an engine that will become the standard.

I am just a little sick to be hearing all this doom and gloom about PC gaming, and 90% of it is coming from the clowns at epic. PC gaming is alive an well, it just is changing right now. It still is the place where you can get the most graphical bang for your buck, but that is not always the best way to design a game. Graphics are pretty but gameplay rules, people need to focus on gameplay first and worry about the graphics later.

Gotta agree with you on that - PC gaming ain't going away any time soon. My avatar is a tribute to that.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to code your own engine vs coding for someone elses engine? I'd wager its a completely different set of programming skills.

It is not really a different set of skills, it is just a lot of work(read millions of lines of code). You would for sure have to hire a full team just to work on the engine. But there are studios out there that make their engines from scratch, and as I said in my second post even if Epic does this someone else will produce the "go to" PC game engine. In the end it will just mean less money int he hand of those tools at Epic, which with the way they have been acting as of late, would be a good thing.

It's really a non-issue.

No reason to feel butt hurt over this you guys. The PC videocards based on the console chipsets usually come out 8-12 months after the console launch, by focusing on the platform that will see use first they can optimize and work out a lot of issues before the PC silicon even exists.

If you ask me this is just matching up dev with the natural hardware flow.

I don't think that's right, Sag. Consoles have never debuted with better tech than what you can obtain with a lot of money for a high-end gaming PC... they just have very optimized innards, and don't have the overhead of an OS and all sorts of other crap that you have on a PC.

The consoles always release with a video chip that takes 8-12 months before it appears on a PC add-in board.

Thing is that the PC usually in general is more powerful even with a last gen video chip than the consoles are, its just that the special features aren't available on the old chips.

Essentially its the PC making up in brute force for the suave new features on console chips until a board based around the consoles chip has been released.

Lots of other just-as-good (and cheaper) 3D Engines already on PC... EPIC simply getting outa the too hot to handle kitchen.

I think just about everyone who posted to this thread could use a blast from the past

http://www.everydayspelling.com/grade3/g3-25words.html

their = possessive "they"
they're = they are

it's = "it is"
its = possessive it

for example: "It's time to spell"
"Internet users' ability to spell has declined significantly as of late. I blame TV. Its lack of written words makes it more difficult for children to learn to spell"

@Shagittarius

Not really, the GPU in the PS3 was in PC's for about a year before the ps3 was ever launched, its the opposite if anything. You got me on the 360 though, only in design though, not power.

I blame text messaging, where the ability to misspell a word in order to shorten it is highly valued.

Oh Fucking Snap.

If you had told me 10 years ago that Epic would be developing engines and games with the console in mind first, I would have laughed... My how times have changed.

If you told me ten years ago that Console gaming would outsell PC's, I'd probably take a shit in my diaper.

If I was a tad older, I'd probably laugh too.What's next? A console port of WoW?

PS: If this does happen, can your great grandson remind my great grandson that I fucking called it?

If you had told me 10 years ago Epic would be developing for consoles I would've started eagerly anticipating a port of Jazz Jackrabbit for my Sega Saturn.

Best picture ever.

I personally think that Diane Keaton looks like John Lennon...

"PCs will follow after that." Ooh, dissed

I lol'd

PC Defense Force...Assemble!!! lol!

Consoles is where the $$$ is at. Plain and simple. I know I know here come all the PC lovers.

I don't think anyone's ever denied that console games can make more money. I just think there's a lot more to the PC gaming market that can't be done on consoles. Mods, for example. I'm interested to see how Supreme Commander can do on the 360 compared to its PC counterpart.

I think that Nintendo can keep the momentum by releasing a new console at the same time as Microsoft lauch another console.

Just make sure to keep the specifications on par with the next Microsoft machine.

Besides, is not that Nintendo can't do pretty graphics... this is the first time Nintendo has the worst graphics this gen.

I think that Nintendo next machine will be pretty impressive, and still cheaper than the competition.

"this is the first time Nintendo has the worst graphics this gen."

Good point Fernando, and look how that turned out. #1 by 3 million and counting. I personally hope Nintendo does make a spec heavy machine next-gen. What I really would love to see is MS+Nintendo console. But then Sony would probably go out of business.

Actually, I'm inclined to think that they'll make something marginally better than the current 360/PS3, and sell it for 200 dollar.

Sony will make another beast for 5-600 dollars, and MS will make another one 4-500 dollars.

I have to agree with Crono.

The Wii is great and all, but I doubt it would sell as well as it has if they upped the graphical capabilities and tagged an extra 100 or so dollars on it due to that.

The lower price point is that much more attractive to a good amount of the people buying these systems, the parents.

lol Wasn't Cliffy B talking to MTV a short while ago about resurrecting the PC platform? Seems that plan has went down the toilet.

Uh, the PC platform doesn't need resurrecting, certainly not from Cliffy B.

as far as i'm concerned. fine. screw you too EPIC. UT3 was a crappy PS3 port and you'll screw us with waiting a year for gears 2 right?

so how about this. piss off because crysis was better anyway.

did you guys ever forget that if it wasn't for the PC the precious consoles WOULDN'T EXIST.

And i doubt the next consoles will have 10 cores. and even if they did, gaming PC's will have 20.

Emo much.

And just how much will that 20 core gaming PC cost you? And how much technical know how do you have to have to build one/know that you need to buy one.

If a game says "Plays on Xbox360", do you know what technical knowledge I need to get it to work? How to open the disc tray and put it in.

FACT: PC gaming is too expensive and too complicated for the average computer illiterate user.

FACT: The average computer illiterate user is part of a much larger market for games than a computer literate PC gamer.

CONCLUSION: Consoles are where the money's at.

And the PC's will still be more expensive and more complicated than sticking a disc in the tray and BOOM,game starts and you're playing. No driver updates,no patches,none of that bullshit. $400 for a full system or $400 for a video card.

No thanks,I think i'll pass on the PC from now on. I learned my lesson when I was younger and at least half the games I bought needed better specs or drivers/patches out of the box that required me to search forums and websites to find (no direction to find them in the manual).

Let me fix that for you crono:

FACT: PC gaming is too expensive and too complicated for me.

FACT: The average computer illiterate user is part of a larger market that includes more than just entertainment software.

Thats where you're wrong shag. Every PC in my home is built by me (except the laptops). But you know what, its way to much hassle to drop thousands on a gaming rig and STILL have problems with framerate and sound, when I can spend half that on a console that just "works".

Do you really think the hardcore PC market is as large as the midcore console market? Don't be dumb.

The money is on consoles. If anything, this gen has proven than.

You'll wait a year for Gears 2...

...and get a game that's 150% as long

Seems like a fair trade to me.

Epic needs to learn (from valve maybe?) that there are two types of engine scaling: scaling up (the only one epic seems to be aware of) and *scaling down*. I'm not the slightest bit impressed by any code that gets it's power by doing little more than jacking up the minimum hardware specs. Which is exactly what Epic has been doing lately.

In fact, that's exactly what their whole PC Gaming Alliance is all about. It's about trying to get that hardware companies to discontinue everything but the high-end stuff, just so poor little Epic doesn't have to bother with anything like efficient code, or scaling down: ie, things that good developers would do make sure to do. I've lost all the respect I used to have for Epic.

What are you saying exactly? Valve's engines are not that impressive. In fact, they look quite dated these days. Epic's engines have always scaled well... up or down.

Actually he's right, that is what Epic are complaining about.

Plus Valve's Engine is four years old now so of course it doesn't look great, but it still looks ok which is amazing.

Their next full engine will be amazing.

Did you guys see this discussion with John Carmack?

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532

Let me guess, Rick Rolled right? Nope not fallin' for it!

All this "multi core" myth is a crap like the old fashioned "the more hertz (mhz or ghz) the better", adding more cores will not make your cpu "better" than other, there are more facts that matter and affects the performance. It just depends on what are you doing with the cpu.

Multi-core isn't a myth... applications just have to be written to be make use of them. And, BTW, the GHz myth is only a myth when comparing processors with different architectures/stepping/etc... If you are comparing two of the same processor then the faster one will indeed be better.

"It just depends on what are you doing with the cpu."

Exactly! If all you wanna do is play Oregon Trail all day, you don't need no stinkin' hertz n' cores! If, on the other hand, you wanna step it up a notch, then yer gonna need that blast processing!

@Vidikron (FU)

Hertz and cores are actually a real myth, you can probe that if you remember all that crap from Pentium 4 and then AMD came into the market with "less hertz" but actually better performance; after AMD came into the market Pentium 4 suddenly disappear together with the hyperthreading and the new Pentium (based in the Pentium 3 architecture) came to the fight and is what you have now being sold.

Exactly the same is happening now, Multi-cores will not make an application faster, those will only work with applications which depends on multiple processes (and you will have one core for Audio, another for graphics, another for doing math and another to keep them sync) but if you try to compile code it will be at the same speed since everything is going to be done by one core. multi cores only have a good application for games, where the application can be separated in multiple processes and this is why PC is being left behind.

"What if he used the PlayStation 3's seven synergistic processing elements as a starting point?"
Then they would have a game engine with very little flexibility.

But on topic, I think Epic is heading the wrong way this time. Why dont they first try to, I dont know, get rid of UE3 nasty texture loading problems or find the cure for next gen shininess. In the end, I think epic will do what they always do. Wait for id to show them the way, add new textures, new lighting effects and claim it as their own.

Unreal Engine 4: Now with even shinier meat blobs.

Hey PC games just don't make enough money compared to console's now a days. Sad but true, with the money it costs to make games today I wouldn't be surprised to see alot of dev's abandoning it.

Yeah, I guess Valve, and Blizzard, and Ironclad ect ect ect, I guess they should just close up because clearly there is no money to be made making game's for the PC.

There is money to be made on the PC, but it's not in making games like Crysis any longer.

And the huge dev costs? That's mostly when making a console game. The licencing fees alone are a huge drain for the developers.

This makes me sad. I understand that PCs are ridiculously expensive, especially gaming PCs. I also understand that for most people, console gaming is a much quicker and cleaner experience (although the exact opposite is true for me personally).

However, this massive shift towards console gaming, even if it is just a media/mass perception, will eventually kill indie games (unless XNA and WiiWare turn out to be popular).

Making a game for the PC is infinitely easier than making a game for a console, not to mention cheaper and typically less restrictive (although there is a wider range of hardware that must be supported). This makes it the ideal platform for indie games. This shift will leave the PC with Peggle and WoW. That's fine for the guys looking to make casual games, but for the guys looking to make more in-depth games, their market is quickly shifting over to the consoles they don't have the money to develop for.

That said, it has always been the case that some games just aren't meant for PC and some games aren't meant for consoles. Super Mario Galaxy, for example, will never be a PC game. The only difference is that as consoles get more computer-like, the line between PC-only games and console-only games blurs.

I don't think UE4 moving consoles only will reduce the number of indie games made with the torque engine. If anything, it widens the market for them since they don't have to bother competing with Epic et al for money.

The PC as major platform is ultimately doomed but I don't expect that for around another 20 years. Still PC gaming will never truly die, like Mac gaming, it will just be a sort of side interest for Devs.

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Unreal Engine 4 to 'exclusively target the next console generation'

Reader Comments (66)

Posted: Mar 13th 2008 1:23PM FredFredrickson said

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