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Wii First Person Shooters (Games)

Unreal 3 Engine to Skip the Wii 245

Mark Rein, speaking with Chris Kohler and Game|Life, has stated that Epic's next-gen Unreal engine will never make it to the Wii. Touting the virtues of high-definition gaming, the 360, and the PS3, Rein said that their engine is simply not designed for Nintendo's hardware. He also quickly mentioned the upcoming deal between Epic and Square Enix: "It's definitely a challenge to convince Japanese developers to work with a third-party technology like ours. But Square Enix, they're the granddaddy. I'm hoping that'll be pulling the stopper out of the drain, and we'll gradually crack that nut. We've been looking to hire somebody in Japan, to be our representative there. " Update: 02/06 04:19 GMT by Z : Accidentally misattributed the interview to CVG when it was a Game|Life piece. Fixed. Also, Chris made sure to point out that a partner of Epic's is trying to get UE3 onto the Wii, so ... maybe someday?
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Unreal 3 Engine to Skip the Wii

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  • What will wii do (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DesertBlade ( 741219 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:09PM (#17897186)
    I am sure they will plenty of other engines for Wii. Maybe even a few just for it.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 )
      Yeah. They can just keep using the ones for the gamecube.
      Its the same hardware, after all.

      (seriously not joking, the differences are so small it wouldnt even be worth calling it a major refresh. I guess thats the real reason they canned the "revolution" codename.)
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Well, maybe you don't understand but the one of the major selling points of the Wii to developers is they could continue to use the same technology and their development costs would not increase ...

        With the Wii you get to produce an Unreal 2 Engine game with some graphical enhancements over a Gamecube game but costs don't explode; in contrast to make a PS3/XBox 360 game your budget will probably explode to being 3-4 times what a PS2/XBox game cost. Now, what I hope happens is that the Wii demonstrates that
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Khakionion ( 544166 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:14PM (#17897264)
    "I'm hoping that'll be pulling the stopper out of the drain, and we'll gradually crack that nut."

    Yeah, better jump under that bandwagon before the train leaves the station!
  • by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:16PM (#17897306)
    I thought this was known back in August/September?

    I swear I saw an interview saying that Red-Steel was an Unreal 2 Engine game and it was unlikely the Wii could support an Unreal 3 Engine game ...

    The fact is that the Unreal 3 Engine was designed with a reasonably powerful GPU (probably in the Geforce 6800 range) and a reasonably powerful CPU (AMD X2 3800+ as a guess) in mind and the Wii simply isn't in the same league. The Wii should be able to handle the Doom 3, Unreal 2 and (maybe) the Source engine which are all solid game engines which should be good for several years.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      I have serious doubts that Source and other truly advanced game engines will ever appear on Wii unless they are severely compromised. The sad fact is, as awesome and powerful as the Wii is in a lot of ways, Nintendo made a huge mistake not adding to the feature set of the GPU. GPUs have moved a bit beyond 2001; Nintendo hasn't.

      Although on the whole the Wii is more powerful than the original XBox, and Source did appear on the XBox in the form of Half-Life 2, Valve has stated (although I can't find the quote)
  • by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:17PM (#17897318) Homepage Journal
    "never make it to the Wii"

    That sounds like a painful medical problem.
  • High def gaming? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:20PM (#17897360)
    What version of the Unreal engine didn't support "high def" resolutions?

    Oh, that's right... None of them... Yet they all managed to support running at a lower resolution too. This is a huge load of marketing bullshit.

    Besides, they'll change their mind and compile it for the Wii (and the PS2) as soon as not doing it costs them a licensing agreement. (Unless Microsoft or Sony is paying them actual cash to be High-Def only?)
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Watch me care.. I'd think almost any game engine can pull off 480p at a decent framerate these days, it's not like any game looking for one will come up short. Btw: A note to all Wii gamers, Warioware: Smooth moves is the most overrated game so far with a short SP and hardly any simultanious play in MP. Get Rayman's Raving Rabbits, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz or hold out for Mario Party 8.
      • Warioware: Smooth moves is the most overrated game so far

        Your problem is you haven't turned it into a drinking game yet.

        Sit down with a few cases of beer and play it with some friends. Every time you screw up you take a drink.

        Fun times. Already starting some new memories now... Well from what I can remember anyway :)

        . Get Rayman's Raving Rabbits, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz or hold out for Mario Party 8.

        Wife and I tried Super Monkey Ball and it really wasn't for us. The control is klunky and not ve
    • Re:High def gaming? (Score:4, Informative)

      by JanusFury ( 452699 ) <kevin.gadd@gmaiS ... com minus distro> on Monday February 05, 2007 @08:12PM (#17898084) Homepage Journal
      Running a DX9/DX10-class game engine or graphics application on a DX7-class or DX8-class GPU is not remotely close to being as easy as 'compiling it for the Wii and the PS2'. No offense, but if you knew *anything* about game engines, you'd realize this. There are significant hurdles preventing an engine like Unreal 3 from running on hardware like the PS2 or Wii without being designed specifically for it in the first place.

      The problem here is that UE3 was designed for a system with a modern graphics processor and fairly high end CPU. The Wii and PS2 have neither of these things, so UE3 simply won't run on them. Obviously, stuff like the previous Unreal Engine (used by Red Steel) runs fine on the Wii, so it's not as if the Wii can't run games. It just can't run UE3.
      • Only the XBOX 360 uses Direct X. The Wii and PS3 both use OpenGL, which has no problems with taking advantage of new features while still working on old cards due to the requirement for a full implementation of a lot of things. Old cards do it in software, new ones in hardware.
        • Old cards do it in software, new ones in hardware.

          Perhaps UE3 requires a certain level of performance that can only be provided by the hardware implementations present in the PS3/XBox360?

      • by dbIII ( 701233 )

        Running a DX9/DX10-class game engine ... not remotely close to being as easy as 'compiling it for the Wii and the PS2'. No offense, but if you knew *anything* about game engines, you'd realize this

        Direct-X and not OpenGL for a cross-patform game on consoles? I'm fairly ignorant on this issue but it looks like the criticism above also is.

      • by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
        DirectX is only relevant to PC games (and now Xbox games), so stop using that to compare in the console gaming world. Real console games use OpenGL, so you need to be more specific on what is and isn't supported (e.g. pixel shading).
  • Misreadind trends (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NotthatFrankie ( 1004384 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:23PM (#17897400)
    So Epic wants to have a "representative" in Japan, but their newest engine doesn't support Wii? Doesn't Nintendo own the market over there?
    • Sony's king actually. Still. Since it'll take a while for the Wii to catch up to the Ps2. This might change later when the ps2 market declines. But the ps2 is still very strong.
      • Well of course the PS2 is still market champ. But if you're talking about the current generation of consoles, then Wii is the champ in Japan, since they overtook the 360 during the holiday season. The PS3 just isn't selling that well. Which makes sense, because it has no compelling software yet.
    • by brkello ( 642429 )
      There is actually this small startup over there called Sony. I am sure you will be hearing about them someday soon.
  • who cares... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thedogcow ( 694111 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:28PM (#17897466)
    This is not a troll. Anyway, who cares? The whole point of the Wii is not to deliver stunning movie-quality graphics. The point of the Wii is to change the way games are played. High end graphics are overrated anyway. Doom 3 and Quake 4 both have fantastic fx but the game play is not innovative and is boring. WarioWare for the Wii has minimal graphics, but IMHO, is very replayable. I know I'm sounding old here but I'm sick of the argument that graphics are everything. In other words, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 may render a piece of crap in high detail... capturing all the intricate details and using 16X anti-aliasing to render the post steam convecting off of it... but it still a piece of crap. I want to be able to play with that piece of crap... toss it around like bowling or in tennis. I can do this with the Wii and it smells fantastic.
    • Re:who cares... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Spikeles ( 972972 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:39PM (#17897596)
      Aye, the exact reason Starcraft, Morrowwind, Baldurs Gate, Betrayal at Krondor, Commander Keen, Doom, C&C (list goes on) are all very fun games that i still play these days. They don't have the gfx of todays games, but heck they are still fun! And here [vgcats.com] is why Bloom sucks.
      • by karnal ( 22275 )
        You aren't kidding about bloom.

        Got my first experience on the 360 using bloom. As a side note, I don't plan on purchasing a current-gen console, since I just sank 1200$ into a dual core machine for my pc gaming. However, I was at a friend's house, and one of the games he had was Project Gotham. Similar in playability (at least my brief tour) to GT4 and it's ilk, I was having a blast tearing up my "host's" times.

        Got to the end of a straight stretch where you play for about 20 seconds under a bridge coveri
        • Bloom, Ragdolls, "physics", there all just the next "lens flare", poorly implemented features to cram on the back of the box to to tout some intangible superiority.
          • Ragdolls, "physics", there all just the next "lens flare", poorly implemented features to cram on the back of the box to to tout some intangible superiority.

            Bloom yes, ragdolls maybe, but "physics"? I think the way games use the physics to create sandboxes for user designed gameplay are a great idea. How many times have you played Oblivion, FEAR, FarCry, or GTA, and just sat there playing with the physics instead of doing the missions? The physics add so much more playability, they don't need to be fancy,

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              I put in "physics" as opposed to physics for a reason. The "" were supposed to denote games where physics serves as nothing but a gimmick, and add nothing to gameplay. "physics" refers to games where you can throw your gun on the ground and watch is slide with no real physics.

              As for stair dismount, that was hosted on my county school systems file servers courtesy of me for a while. Along with Q2, tribes, tribes2, and Truck dismount.
          • by SirSlud ( 67381 )
            Show me a game that actually lists having a "lens flare" on the back of the box.

            The key to all these features is using them properly. When the effects are shoved down your throat at a detrement to gameplay, than yes, it sucks. But start actually looking out for lense flares in games; you'll be surprised how many games have them and you've never even noticed it before. Those are the games that use those features to enhance the level of immersion .. you just don't notice how frequently they're used properly b
            • I was not saying lens flare in relation to modern games. There was a time however when it was a "feature".

              Many games use lens flare. I do notice, I do look for the proper application of certain graphical things. I also tend to say things like "Shit?! I wish my maps looked as good as these." and "Wow, I would have been fucked had I not been able to hear where he was coming from."

              Yes, I know how the little details go towards making the whole. I study this stuff because I want to do it myself one day.
              • by SirSlud ( 67381 )
                There was a time however when it was a "feature".

                Cmon, that was a challenge. Okay, so we admit it was never on the back of the box, and of course, at one time, it was a feature, for those 'in the know'. Just like any advance in graphics technology or anything you could do with increased power from newer hardware. But why shouldn't that be a feature. Its now something you can do which, properly used, can increase the level of immersion and/or make the game look prettier.

                I will launch into my own diatribes ab
      • by nuzak ( 959558 )
        Ceasar 4 has perhaps some of the most gratuitous bloom I've ever seen in a game. Every building in it just shines like a thousand suns, and makes your GPU about as hot too. Tilted Mill is now 0 for 2 on picking up Impressions' legacy.

        Perhaps it's why Gamespy skipped the Lens Flare Award for 2006 -- bloom won it in 2004, and it deserved to win the dubious honor again, but there's nothing new to say about it.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by imsabbel ( 611519 )
        Because those games didnt have graphics as their big selling point at the time of their release? Yeah, retrospective reality distortion hey...

        Commander Keen: pixel-wise fluid scrolling unseen before on EGA IBM-PCs
        Doom: No need to mention. People were blown away by the full-screen (pseudo) 3D graphics. I knew someone who bought a Pentium60 more or less just to play the game for its graphics.
        C&C: new frontiers for FMV cutscenes and the best use of the 320x200*8bit vga resolution seen in any strategy-game
        • My point is simply that graphics don't make the games, gameplay does. I listed those games because i liked the gameplay, and the quality of the graphics does not impact how i feel about the game. This is in contrast to the myriad of players who see the latest and greatest Battlefield game and go "OOO! Shiny" and rave on about how awesome it is, although the gameplay is crap ( this is my biased opinion though ).

          So you want some more recent games that have awesome gameplay that don't need the latest and gr
        • The point is that these games remain fun without the draw to their graphics. It is time to realize that we are in the computing era of "good enough." Processors were good enough about 5 years ago for most useful tasks. There are exceptions, but those applications that constantly need more power will probably never be completely satisfied.

          Once developers realize that they can make a game that has good enough graphics and superior design and sell like gangbusters, gaming will start its renaissance.

          Nintendo is
      • I am hoping Bloom is just a fad right now. First it was lens flare (many PS1 games, Wing Commander Prohpecy), then it was the "make everything look sealed in Saran wrap" (Halo, Doom3), and now the fad is Bloom (Oblivion, Half Life 2 Lost Coast). Hopefully we have something decent for the next fad.
        • A little bit of bloom is good, but most games use overkill, Oblivion and Full Spectrum Warrior are examples, some of the bloom looks great! but alot of it just makes the scene look bad. As SirSlud said [slashdot.org] use them in the right amounts and in the right places and it looks good.
    • by acidrain ( 35064 )
      I care. When EA bought Renderware a few years back they created a vacuum that Unreal was filling. But now Unreal sucks on the PS3 and won't run on the Wii which is shockingly turning out to be a more compelling platform than the PS3 and competitive with the 360. So this means that all the big game companies who have to target all platforms for simple financial reasons (Unreal's real-world technical concerns meaning nothing to the people who tie their ties right in the morning) cannot turn to Unreal as th
    • by GWBasic ( 900357 )

      Anyway, who cares? The whole point of the Wii is not to deliver stunning movie-quality graphics. The point of the Wii is to change the way games are played. High end graphics are overrated anyway. Doom 3 and Quake 4 both have fantastic fx but the game play is not innovative and is boring. WarioWare for the Wii has minimal graphics, but IMHO, is very replayable. I know I'm sounding old here but I'm sick of the argument that graphics are everything. In other words, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 may render a piece

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rm999 ( 775449 )
      Play unreal tournament 2004 - it has amazing gameplay (I have been playing it regularly for 3 years now). I predict UT 2007 will be about as good.

      Of course, those are better as PC games, so I still may agree with you for consoles :)
    • Um, and aside from Wii sports (which gets boring) and Zelda (which ends), there's really nothing worth playing atm on the Wii imo. The XBox 360 has an excellent game library, with solid titles that are pretty *and* fun. If you want to rate systems regardless of graphics in terms of a fun game library, the XBox 360 certainly takes that crown from this generation, and while that is opinion, rating on metacritic will certainly bear it out.

      Yeah, I like Nintendo too, but c'mon. That's totally misrepresentin
    • "The whole point of the Wii is not to deliver stunning movie-quality graphics. The point of the Wii is to change the way games are played."

      Not really. Nintendo realized that a technological arms race would leave them dead last and bankrupt (they might have to steal from the "Pokemon Trust Fund" for a while).

      To me, the wiimote is an interesting add on, much like the specialty controllers for say Guitar Hero and Steel Battalion, but not the "revolutionary input device" it has been billed as. It's a gimm

  • Not News (Score:5, Funny)

    by My name is Bucket ( 1020933 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:44PM (#17897676)
    Is anyone really surprised that UE3 won't run on the Wii?

    I mean, far be it from me to drone on about hardware limitations, but the Wii wasn't even made for that kind of software. It's all about gameplay, man, the gameplay! When will you people learn that the ability to wave a stick around offers endless gameplay possibilities?!? You can pretend it's a sword or a bat or a racket or a longer stick or some bat/sword hybrid. A bword, if you will. The Wiimote responds to your every movement, duh. It then translates that movement into a general "the Wiimote is moving" signal which then triggers one of three generic sword-swinging animations. How can you not see the potential?

    Seriously, though: there may be a shortage of horsepower for the Wii, but thankfully the world will never run out of people to say "Man that game would be soooo awesome using the Wiimote".
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Chyeld ( 713439 )

      When will you people learn that the ability to wave a stick around offers endless gameplay possibilities?!? You can pretend it's a sword or a bat or a racket or a longer stick or some bat/sword hybrid. A bword, if you will.

      Sword-chucks! [nuklearpower.com]

      Just saying...

    • by jpardey ( 569633 )
      Thanks for that. I am tired of all the hype about the Wii, especially since most of the games don't really track the motion that well. If there was a swordfighting game that you could actually have control of the sword's position in, I would be more interested.

      • Thanks for that. I am tired of all the hype about the Wii, especially since most of the games don't really track the motion that well.


        I'm into Call of Duty 3 on the Wii right now. Graphics aren't the best, and I grew tired of the WW2 genre 20 WW2 games ago, but the gameplay is cool...

        Nothing comes as close to mouse-keyboard as the nunchik-wiimote combo... I can't stand the thumbsticks on other consoles... I think for FPS, the control on the wii is more natural than anything else
  • Who Cares (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rev Jim (AKA Metal F ( 1004571 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @08:08PM (#17898010)
    The people who own wiis, or the target audience for wiis compared to the target audience of Unreal are like comparing Slayer fans to Radiohead fans, they're so far apart it's like night and day almost. I mean there's really no reason to have unreal on the wii when it's on every other platform. That said, there will be FPS titles on the wii and I'm sure a developer with a 3d engine developed for the wii will emerge as the defacto wii 3d engine soner or later, or a ported engine will take that place until something beter comes along. It obviously won't be able to compete graphically, but the gamers on the wii are looking forward to Mario Planet (or whatver it's called) or Metroid Prime to establish what we can come to expect from the wii in graphics as well as gameplay, we don't particuariuly care if unreal makes it to wii or not and we know the hardware isn't going to support Crysis or Company of Heroes really - but that's not the wii's niche anyways.
  • by Jartan ( 219704 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @08:28PM (#17898262)
    Ok so basically nobody is going to be able to make horrendously ugly "realistic" graphics that end up looking like a 12 year old made them in bryce and poser right?

    Nintendo must be sweating bullets.
  • But Square Enix, they're the granddaddy. I'm hoping that'll be pulling the stopper out of the drain, and we'll gradually crack that nut.

    My poor little grammar^W English nazi head just exploded :(

  • by theantix ( 466036 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @08:54PM (#17898544) Journal
    The new Wii controller isn't necessarily going to work with "traditional" games like Unreal. Red Steel for example was completely crap... even if you factor out the bad graphics and horrible voice acting, the gameplay itself was pretty lame *because of the controller*. For me at least, the Wiimote is going to supplant, not replace, the existing types of games out there. When GTA4 comes out I'll grab a PS3 or 360, but when friends come to visit I'll throw WarioWare up on the Wii for everyone to laugh until it hurts.
  • Shaders (Score:3, Informative)

    by Drilian ( 661329 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @09:04PM (#17898650) Homepage
    In a nutshell:

    The UE3 engine is heavily built around pixel shaders. Everything it does is based around shader support.

    The Wii is not capable of doing pixel shaders. The hardware can't do it. Period.

    Take away the shader support, and UE3 becomes no different than UE2. Note that UE2 does, in fact, support the Wii platform.

    This is a hardware issue, it has pretty much nothing to do with Epic.
  • by midnightJackal ( 680627 ) on Monday February 05, 2007 @11:13PM (#17899760)
    I had the pleasure of hearing a speech from Epic at The Tokyo Games Show earlier this year (titled "Opportunities for Japanese Corporations in Middleware for Next-Generation Hardware"). While Sweeney did a good job of coming off as confident, but not overly so, in the Unreal engine itself. He was willing to offer the mostly Japanese audience a handful of reasons why their engine is and isn't the right way for companies to go, based on what sort of game you're trying to make. I could tell that the Japanese developers around me were on the same page as Sweeney, based on their gestures and the fact that they were actually taking notes about things that he said.

    After that, Jay Wilbur decided to add a few words. Or rather, to be American. Now, don't get me wrong, I generally approve of being direct and selling your selling points, rather than mentioning that, yeah, our product isn't going to butter your toast every morning... BUT... when dealing with a Japanese audience, upfront honesty is the best way to go. Sweeney also had the "I'm roughly Japanese-sized" thing going for him. When rotund Wilbur stepped up to the plate, he set a bad tone by telling the rather humble but proud crowd of Japanese developers that "You need this engine". I heard one guy whisper to his friend, "Where does this guy think games started? Huh? *WE* __NEED__ them? Pfft." (in Japanese, so that's paraphrasing, of course)

    What started as a good, solid discussion into the benefits of buying A game engine, ANY game engine, was quickly derailed into a product pitch for THEIR game engine. The thing is, Japanese companies, despite what modernizations have happened here, are still rather loyal when it comes to their big huge purchases. They'd rather go with someone they know, and I'm fairly certain that if Wilbur had just said nothing, or said much less than he did, and used much less arrogance and self-pimping in his speech, that the Japanese crowd would have gone home thinking, "You know, there's a company that's honest about their product, and that's willing to come all the way out here to persuade us that game engines are worth buying. We should seriously think about buying theirs". Instead, a lot of people left the room shaking their heads, muttering things about "Typical Americans. All talk. All about them. (etc)"

    The thing about dealing with a foreign country is to go in and appreciate their background, their culture, and their style of work. To go in and trample all over their acheivements in an attempt to hock your wares just doesn't cut it.

  • What do they mean, that the engine is incapable of running in 480i/p?

    Maybe they should have said they didn't feel like porting it... or that they didn't think it would sell well. Saying they were going to have some sort of technical difficulty porting the engine to the Wii is just ludicrous.

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