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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land On March 5 Epic Games plans to release a free expansion pack for the PC and Playstation 3 version of Unreal Tournament 3 which adds new maps, units, vehicles, characters and awards.
Epic Games vice president Mark “Call Me Chocolate” Rein has let slip that the developer is hard at work on a “major expansion” to Unreal Tournament 3, according to a report from Eurogamer. Rein also confirmed that Chicago based publisher Midway was still the game’s publisher, clearing up any confusion that the Unreal Tournament series was one of the licensed underperformers it was trimming off.
Midway said that Unreal Tournament 3for Xbox 360 is shipping on July 7th. As we just reported, it comes with a video preview of Gears of War 2, and the announcement says it’s all new “never before seen” footage, with Cliff Blezinski and producer Rod Ferguson.
The content exclusive to the Xbox 360 version is comprised of five maps, two new characters and the previously-released DLC. It’s also got splitscreen. Full announcement after the jump!
Unreal’s an engine that’s making Epic some serious money. Pity, then, that Unreal as a franchise is a shadow of its former self. UTIII’s done OK, don’t get me wrong, but few at Epic or Midway would say it’s performed as expected. So what does that mean for the proper Unreal games? You remember, those singleplayer ones with a story and stuff. What about them? Take it away, Mark Rein:
I’m sure that at some point in our future we will make another Unreal, single-player, story-driven game. I’m sure at some point there will be one…[however]there are no plans to do one today.
What about tomorrow? Oh yeah. Gears 2. OK, we’ll get back to you in 2011, thanks. Unreal Tournament 3 [Eurogamer]
We’re eventually going to get to the point where someone recreates the Old Testament as Klingon musical theatre in Unreal Tournament 3, but until then, we’ll have to settle for custom characters and UT2D gameplay mods and user-generated content like this Super Mario Bros. style map. If only we could add mods to cancer research or something. The cure would be on the internet with a Creative Commons licence by the weekend.
UT2D-SuperMario_Beta [PC/PS3] [Epic Forums - thanks, Samuraidino!]
Unreal Tournament III on PS3 is mod-heaven. People are going bananas! But what about the Xbox 360? Microsoft previously stated it wasn’t up for allowing mods. Where do they stand now, pre-release? Let’s ask Mark Rein. Mark?
Unreal Tournament 3 has served as a console gamer’s diplomat, successfully pulling mods long restricted to PCs to the PS3 and *fingers crossed* the Xbox 360. But past mods have been in small pieces, like Samus skins, more meant to customise the game than fundamentally exploit its robust engine.
Now the user-based developers behind Tactical Ops (a classic UT mod similar to CounterStrike) are talking about bringing Tactical Ops 3 to consoles. While the team doesn’t think that the first release of TO3 will support the PS3 or Xbox 360 (due to issues like button mapping), they’re confident in the possibility for future releases. And when console mods become the size of full games, we can’t stand behind a waist-height object fast enough.
PlayStation 3 gamers who thought the joy of downloading updates for their first person shooter of choice was coming to an end can enjoy at least one more patch. Unreal Tournament 3 has been updated, announced Epic Games, bringing an exciting suite of fixes and feature updates to the console version. The full list of changes, thanks to Jim, is after the jump.
Epic’s Mark Rein dropped into the Epic forums last night to let people know that the PS3 cooker for the Unreal Engine 3 editor is in the final stages of testing and could be out as early as next week.
Folks,
I just wanted to give you an update:
We’re very close to releasing an update to the Unreal Engine 3 editor, that comes with the PC version of UT3, that will allow UT3 mod-makers to cook their mods into the required PS3 format. We’ve been doing some internal testing and we’re hoping to expand to a wider group tomorrow or Friday. If all goes well then we should see the update released next week which is what I expect will happen. Obviously the process works, as we put out a few mods before Christmas and people seem to be playing them, but it is the update to the editor that we’re testing.
Happy New Year!
I can’t wait until the mods start flooding the PS3, I’m hoping it could convince a lot of companies build in their own truly user-created content into console games.
PS3 mod cooking update [Unreal Forums, via Evil Avatar]
This page article a German gaming magazine (can anyone name it?) claims that the Xbox 360 version of Unreal Tournament 3 is 90% finished, and that it will be released around April 2008. However, Epic’s Mark Rein quickly addressed the article to clarify that Epic had not set a release date (which is believable, since UT3 PS3′s release wasn’t solid until the last possible moment) and that as of right now, their focus is to release the PS3 European version of UT3.
Who out there has been playing a lot of UT3? And is anyone eagerly awaiting the 360 version? Do you still care about the franchise?
Mark Rein: We don’t have a solid release date for UT 3 on Xbox 360 [maxconsole]
