Epic has high hopes for Unreal Engine 4, not worried about CryEngine yet

by Alexander Sliwinski on May 11th 2010 5:00PM

With the Unreal Engine 4 targeted for use on the next console generation (whenever that is), Epic President Mike Capps is confident that the product will have "better dominance" than its already ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3. Speaking with Edge, Capps notes the next console generation is "really murky compared to last time," but sees the next-gen tech hanging around the mean streets of the PC market.

Capps also isn't getting antsy about Crytek's CryEngine 3 being the best solution for developers. He explained, "They've positioned themselves strongly as the 'we're gonna be on console, push one button and it's great on all three platforms' engine. ... They've yet to ship an Xbox 360 game and we're five years in. It surprises me that people take them seriously as a crossplatform engine company. We don't know how to compete against a company that hasn't shipped yet. It's all potential, so we'll see." Crytek previously stated its next engine would arrive in 2012.

Now, the real question: will Crytek or Epic even have "next generation consoles" to sell these newfangled engines for in the next couple years?

Source

Tags: epic, epic-games, gears-of-war-3, Mike-Capps, Unreal-Engine-4

Reader Comments (53)

Unreal Engine 4 is pure win. Glad to see some more headway on it. CryEngine is great and all, but the Unreal Engine always wins.

As much as I love the Unreal engine, I'm more concerned with third party corporations such as Bioware having a hard time ironing out the myriad of bugs... We gamers could seriously do better without the bugs.

Unreal gives Mass Effect it's unique visual appeal, which I truly love! That's garnered with Bioware's artistic direction, of course.

@Milton

You bring up a good point. Maybe this time around there will be better luck with it. All I know is the Unreal 4 engine is going to make things oh-so pretty.

Aye, I hope so too, Spike. Something along the lines of a better third party development support infrastructure on Epic's part for one would do wonders for us gamers too, and not just the developers.

Having said all that though, this is something to look out for in the near future.

On a sickness scale; I would love to see a game such as Bayonetta utilizing the Unreal Engine with the fast frame rate and frantic action! :)

SPACE MARINE ENGINE 4

Boring. Why are all the Unreal Engine 3 games so bland and lack a lot of the dynamics that CryEngine3 has.

Oh well, I guess Gears of War 4, 5, and 6 is scheduled for 2013, 2015, 2017.

Yawn @ Unreal

Are you speaking specifically of GoW? Because that's the only game that's remotely "bland". I can list of a slew of games that run on the Unreal 3 engine that aren't bland.

Aside from Mass Effect, there's nothing but bland, hypermasculine or hyperfeminine model games. I don't know of this is a limitation of the engine or what. UnrealEngine is so over used, it's quite disgusting. CryEngine is a good engine but it's overrated as well -- but at least it isn't nearly as limited as Unreal.

Lost Odyssey, American McGee's Grimm, APB, Batman: AA, Army Of Two, Borderlands, Destroy All Humans Furon, Mass Effect, 2 Medal of Honors, Mirror's Edge, Shadow Complex, Stranglehold, 3 Tom Clancy Games, and a ton more coming that are still TBA including the Ender's Game video game. TONS of bland there. All those games suck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unreal_Engine_3

Only Borderlands and maybe Mass Effect 2 have good atmosphere. Bioshock 2 disappointed quite hard in the atmosphere department.

Everything else on that list is utterly bland. Maybe APB might be good but honestly i'm not entirely convinced.

Then speak from an opinionated view rather than just looking like a douche saying all these great titles are boring, bland, not worth while.

It's middleware, so almost anyone can use it and make good or bad games. That isn't the engines fault. That's the developers fault.

However, from what I understand, right now UE3 is better suited for bald people, or at least people without really stylized hair. Lots of great things have been done with that limitation, but that is something you could probably blame on the engine.

Either way though, this is not UE3, this is UE4. For all we know all these (UE3) problems might be ironed out before it ships. Then we could have a million games with space marines with afros

You're just as opinionated, it's just I don't have as much force behind my opinions because they are the bland, mass produced/mass marketed trash that so many people buy.

Batman was alright at best, overhype at best. Perhaps your childhood nostalgia got the best of you when trying to criticize this game. Batman walks so rigidly and the game mechanics is so limiting that it's depressing. Harley is so disgustingly oversexualized, as if she would be one of the marketable assets of the game.

There hasn't been a good Tom Clancy game since GRAW and even that wasn't great.

Army of Two is notoriously bug ridden

The commercial failure Mirrors Edge? lol

You would be right, all those games are awful. What's sad is that I don't know if it's the developers fault or the limitations of the Unreal Engine.

Please, less Unreal Engine kthx

Exactly. I state an opinion. You just come out saying everything under the Unreal 3 engine sucks. Would have been taken a lot better had you stated it "I personally don't think the Unreal engine is that great, etc". But to call all of that trash is just ridiculous. It seems you are hurt by one or two games so you claim every Unreal 3 game sucks.

Okay have fun with your bald space marine, non-dynamic lighting/destructible environment with extremely linear FPS games (because that's all Unreal can do) that have texture loading problems, all powered by Unreal

Why is Unreal so popular? Because it's CHEAP to license, and FAMILIAR because of it's popularity/age. That's it. And you're being lampooned into believing it's the best engine because it fits the corporate bottom line? LMAO have a good day sir.

I'll stick with XRAY, RAGE, CryEngine 3, Frostbite 2.5-3 (thats why the new MoH online portion uses Frostbite and not Unreal -- cuz Unreal sucks despite it's known netcode success), Avalanche, and EGO.

That's fine. Enjoy being a douche bag the rest of your life. Can't even debate a topic. Just insult after insult. Reminds me of the McCain campaign.

@Jono: OBVIOUSLY you have not looked into the Unreal 3 engine much. It's freely available to those who want to use it non-commercially. And the fact that you don't know the engine DOES support FULLY destructible environments tells me you're pulling your information from your a.....

i'm not gonna go there. But you get my point don't you? :)

I'm not sure if I'd agree with that.

I wouldn't say either was "pure win". I'd say that having the two engines compete is "pure win". Any industry where there's not at least two products with similar quality and use tends to stagnate. Both engines have strengths and weakness', but what's driving each them for excellence is purely having the other.

I wouldn't be worried either if I was Epic.

@Jono: you do realise the fact that there's even one game (e.g. Mass Effect) that is not bland means it's likely the fault of the developers of said "bland games" and not the engine, yes?

Perhaps you should direct your hate to them and not Epic for making a great engine.

Bioshock 1/2 both run on the unreal engine 2.5 (albiet highly modified)

Just like Modernwarfare 1/2 Both run on the Quake 3 engine....technically

Jono really doesn't have a clue of the technical specs of Unreal Engine 3 and all the possibilities it provides- specifically those catering to many of the things he listed off in his last post.

What a douche. He really needs to do a bit of research before letting such excrement flow from his mouth hole.

I don't understand how they need next gen consoles for these new engines.

They just won't have different types of shaders and physics.

Cryengine 3 was made to support this gen.

They want to utilize advanced shaders and hit the procs WAY harder than current gen can handle. These consoles have no prayer of pulling off some of the advanced techniques Epic is said to be loading in UE4.

PCs will be where it shines until it makes its way to the new breed of consoles which will be powerful enough to handle the improvements.

" push one button and it's great on all three platforms' engine"

God the day a game is made on the Wii with the unreal engine will be the day i scalp myself and go streaking.

Or did he mean PC?

That quote is about cryengine, not unreal. It's mainly about optimization between xbox and ps3, not sure how the wii works into that.

Oh gotcha. I totally read that wrong.

I really like Unreal because the free UDK, but I look really forward to the release of free CryEngine. So I guess the "winner" in my eyes is the engine with the most user friendly editor, which manages to capture the indie developers.

Hrm, what do you mean by "free", Viking?

The UDK engine is free, can be downloaded from udk.com.
Let's whoever download the engine, develop game, and even release it free of charge. They only require 25% of profits if you cross 5.000$ in sales I think.
Which is fantastic for indie developers and people who wants to start developing games.
What did you think I meant, Milton?

Oh, I just wanted to know more, and for you to perhaps expand and clarify on your post. I just have an interest in using this engine is all.

So thanks for that! :)

Ah, sorry then. Could sound very much like a typical "pirate free?" comment.
But it is a very good deal, very much free training material too. But Gnomon has some very good dvds on this software as well.

Less UE3 games please. Tired of all these muddy looking games with texture loading issues and whatnot.

The texture loading issues are sooo annoying!

Some of the games don't have the issue. Like in ME2 the texture streaming is almost non-existent, and first party Unreal games, Gears of War.

Crappy textures AND generally crappy animations. I can't stand watching batman walk the way he does!

I dont get what people have on texture loading. Sure, it's easily eliminated by making the inital load time a few seconds longer, but why not keep that load time lower and let me get my bearings, check weapons, etc, while i wait the whole 5-10 seconds for all the textures to load?

Seeing has how many incremental updates have been done to UE3, I don't think it's going away anytime soon.

Pardon me for being totally ignorant to the graphical/development side of things, but a new Unreal Engine means a new Unreal Tournament. Sadly I'm not as excited as I normally would be.
UT3 was okay, but not quite as good as UT2k4 IMO. If they can get back to the level of greatness they had with UT2k4 I'd be ecstatic. (And of course I'd love to see some UT2k4 maps- Instagib CTF on Citadel anyone?)

I agree, UT3 was a disappointment, did not live up to the greatness that was UT2k4

"....They've yet to ship an Xbox 360 game and we're five years in."

yeah but their quality of games is much more superior.

for me even still when i was about to buy a new computer, i thought will it run crysis?

"They've yet to ship an Xbox 360 game and we're five years in. It surprises me that people take them seriously as a crossplatform engine"

Let the feces slinging begin! ...again.

It's a good point though.

With all the graphical power gaming PC's have nowadays its sad to know that these companies are not interested in trying to make the best, most powerful engine, but one that works for 5 year old outdated consoles. But what can you do?

It is sad, but the consoles are dominating the industry. That is why I am ready for a next-gen of consoles, so the PC can finally show its muscle, rather than be held back by the consoles. : (

How much demand is there for a new console generation at this point? It doesn't feel to me like anybody is really chomping at the bit. Most people seem pretty content with what we've got.

We're barely about 3.5 years in on the Wii and PS3, and about 5 years for the Xbox 360. Most of the recent consoles have lasted around 5-6 years, and then continuing for a few years after the replacement arrives.

I think by 2012 people will be ready for the next wave of consoles.

I just hope they improve on the net code with this upcoming engine. Games running UE3 always tend to lag pretty badly be it multiplier (ie GOW) and co-op (ie Conviction). Maybe this is the developer's fault, I dunno.

I does like me some Unreal....

I love Unreal Engine, but the texture pop-in can get pretty damn annoying. It was one of my main pet peeves with Mass Effect.

As long as they can do away with that for UE4, I'm good.

The real ignorance here is ""They've positioned themselves strongly as the 'we're gonna be on console, push one button and it's great on all three platforms' engine. ... They've yet to ship an Xbox 360 game and we're five years in. It surprises me that people take them seriously as a crossplatform engine company. "

They're talking about a company that was strictly PC games until cryengine 3..which they just started using last year for Crysis 2....so you can't really count them as "5 years in" because THEY just entered the console gaming side of gaming. They've never had a console game before but from the videos of crysis 2..even though it looks worse than crysis 1 on PC, it still looks years ahead of anything released on UE3. And that's the only fair comparison. Comparing UE4 with CE3 isn't fair but based on the increase of UE2 and 3...I'm not gonna be impressed. Cryengine is STILL years ahead of itself...PCs have issues doing everything it can do, and no company makes full use of it..not even Crytek. It's all about how much the engine can do, UE is too limited and the only reason people use it is because they're too lazy to learn anything new.

"They've yet to ship an Xbox 360 game and we're five years in. It surprises me that people take them seriously as a crossplatform engine company."

Hey Mike, was your company able to fix the UE3's inability to support any AA filter without requiring developers/GPU vendors to use their own custom code? Were you able to resolve Unreal Engine 3's documented texture streaming problems (which are prevalent across all platforms currently using it)? Oh, that's right...your company hasn't fixed either issue since your product's release. Instead of putting any effort into publicly dismissing your competitor's upcoming engine (which makes you look like an arrogant prick, by the way), you should try putting your energy into fixing and refining the tools you expect other developers to license from you. Those who choose to live in glass houses aren't exactly in a position to be throwing stones at others. Just sayin'.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Epic has high hopes for Unreal Engine 4, not worried about CryEngine yet

Reader Comments (53)

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:03PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:10PM Baron Milton Von Crompton said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:13PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:20PM Baron Milton Von Crompton said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:29PM Jono said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:31PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:42PM Jono said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:46PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:46PM Jono said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:47PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:54PM sonicspike41 said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:55PM Jono said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:57PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:09PM Jono said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:14PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:24PM Morisato said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:35PM sortius said

Posted: May 11th 2010 9:59PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 12th 2010 7:36AM Captain Underpants and the Bring said

Posted: May 12th 2010 12:24PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:09PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:45PM arrrgh said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:11PM OzCueball said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:17PM Menzlo said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:18PM OzCueball said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:18PM Digital Viking said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:24PM Baron Milton Von Crompton said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:28PM Digital Viking said

Posted: May 11th 2010 7:44PM Baron Milton Von Crompton said

Posted: May 11th 2010 8:12PM Digital Viking said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:21PM jynxycat said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:27PM Morisato13 said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:25PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:42PM liquidsoap89 said

Posted: May 11th 2010 10:58PM R Planteer said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:25PM Crusty Magic said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:28PM Razer922 said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:31PM Digital Viking said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:33PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:50PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 5:56PM Duke said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:11PM AwesomeSauce said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:35PM RKN said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:33PM OremLK said

Posted: May 11th 2010 8:27PM sonicspike41 said

Posted: May 11th 2010 7:40PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 8:10PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 10:06PM Fata1Stryke said

Posted: May 11th 2010 10:25PM Kougeru said

Posted: May 11th 2010 10:45PM jackal said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW