Our pal at Game Trailers, Geoff Keighley, will be debuting the demo of the next-gen Unreal Engine 4 graphics tech some time during E3 on Spike, but in the week before E3 he’s breaking some Nintendo fan’s hearts. He Tweeted last night that the Wii U, Nintendo’s console that’s close to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in terms of horsepower, will run the Unreal Engine 3 and appeared to dismiss the chance of it running the PS4/Xbox720-caliber Unreal Engine 4 tech.
Yeah, the Unreal Engine was once synonymous with cutting-edge PC graphics tech. Once. But in the future? With Unreal Engine 4.0? Well, it’s going to be geared towards consoles, not the PC. So says Epic boss Tim Sweeney:
There is a long life ahead for Unreal Engine 3. Version 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. PCs will follow after that.
Exclusively targeting consoles? PCs following after a Nintendo console? Egads. Epic and PC fanboys, let me get my boat and a paddle together before your salty tears cry me a river. Tim Sweeney, Part 3: Unreal Engine 4.0 aims at next-gen console war [TG Daily]
Who would have thought that, after making three successful Unreal engines, Epic would make another? During a recent visit to Epic’s offices, several noticed a pile of Beautiful Mindesque scribbles on programmer Tim Sweeney’s desk. And that crazy scribble, my friends, was confirmed to be the early strings of code for Unreal Engine 4. Those little pencil markings will become headshots, chainsawed bodies and probably even ponies and crap.
Then again, it’s not like these companies are conjuring engines out of thin air. If you want a first look at Unreal Engine 4, just take a glance at Unreal 3… and apparently a trip past Tom Sweeney’s desk won’t hurt, either. Because until we have Barbie’s next adventure with real solid plastic boob physics, that much will have to do.
