Epic Games Finally Working on a PC Exclusive Game
Is Epic making a return to the Unreal franchise?
This past weekend at PAX East, Epic Games creative lead Cliff Bleszinski and president Mike Capps revealed during a panel discussion that the studio is currently working on a PC exclusive. Capps actually teased the audience by using the word "might," but Bleszinski later clarified that Epic is indeed working on the unnamed title.
However after the panel, Capps verified with Joystiq that development is definitely underway, and so far the plan is to keep it a PC platform exclusive. Typically "PC exclusive" points to casual and/or social gaming, but perhaps Epic is finally heading home after making the console sector its primary (bread winner) focus for almost an entire decade.
Unfortunately, little else is known about the project. The last shooter stemming from the studio was Bulletstorm, but that was actually developed by People Can Fly which Epic purchased back in 2007. The subsidiary originally crashed the PC gaming scene with Painkiller back in 2004, published by DreamCatcher and inspired by the likes of DOOM and Quake.
So what was the last real PC exclusive produced by Epic? Unreal and the Return to Na Pali expansion pack? Nope. Even Unreal Tournament initially started out on the PC, but was eventually ported over to consoles. It seems that Unreal Tournament 2004 is listed as one of the last desktop exclusives, published by Atari and landing on the PC, Linux and Mac OS X.
Does this mean Epic may return to the Unreal universe? It would be nice to have a third installment developed internally given that Unreal 2: The Awakening (2003), developed by Legend Entertainment, received average-ranking reviews (75.49-percent). The original Unreal is a classic despite some of the multiplayer issues it experienced after launching in the late 1990s.
Anyone else tired of crap console ports?
i dont like him, mike is tollarable, when ever he talked about about piracy, he just said it changed the buissness model, and it did.
cliff is quoted saying to an effect anyone who builds a pc pirates and eff them, they don't get my games.
i would love a mindless and highly skill based cqb unreal like game, thats my favorite multiplayer style game
At any rate, I would like to see a new Unreal Tournament. I played the hell out of the 1st one and UT2K4 and I still fire them up from time to time just for a nostalgic kick. I was sad that the last one sort of bombed. Anyway, Im curious to see what they have planned, as long as its not like Gears of War...
Anyone else tired of crap console ports?
I still think they should just sell a standardised PC instead of a console, then there wouldn't be huge issues with this porting business.
If Unreal made better games, and priced them accordingly AND competitively [hint hint to all developers, it's still a competition knuckle heads] piracy effects would be non-existent. Some people who pirate the game never even have the intention of purchasing it, so that isn't a lost sale. Some people just don't want to fork over $60 for a mild experience. Like I always say, if all games were sold at $30 retail, +/- $5 depending on quality, the industry would be in much better health, and the used game sector would be way smaller. Gamestop used games is $27 if a new one is $30 [usually]. That's just not enough to justify a Used game most of the time
an fpsmmo, not done often and when done right are great games.