B3D News Item: Warner Bros. Announces Long-Term UE3 Licensing Agreement

[AlNom]

The Unreal Engine 3 train continues to roll out at least as far as 2014 for both Rocksteady Studios, developers of Batman: Arkham Asylum and the anticipated sequel, Arkham City, and NetherRealm Studios, the team now in charge of the Mortal Kombat series.

“Unreal Engine 3 is one of the leading development tools available for today’s creative teams and it is a perfect fit for both NetherRealm and Rocksteady,” said Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President, Production and Development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “Mortal Kombat_and _Batman: Arkham City use the engine’s state-of-the-art capabilities to provide the important foundation in bringing gamers the experience they are looking for.”

“We’re very excited that the talented production teams at NetherRealm and Rocksteady will continue to make Unreal Engine 3 their exclusive core technology for the next few years to create the exceptional titles they are so known for,” said Mark Rein, Vice President, Epic Games. “We look forward to seeing how the engine will contribute to the upcoming games from these teams and potentially other Warner teams and external developers who develop or publish with Warner.”
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[AlNom]

Well, I suppose we have the pixel counting results for Mortal Kombat on PS3. I'm actually more interested to see what implications the DX11 additions to the engine will have for future games. I admit, the first thing I thought of for Batman was Clayface & tessellation deformation... And well, heck, the Samaritan demo with the Batman-theme instead... (I'm dreaming...)

I'd be interested to see how things have changed in the race to 60Hz for the Mortal Kombat devs. The GDC2009 presentation itself was rather enlightening on the post-process overheads.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

There goes AlStrong talking to himself again.

Announcement itself isn't very susprising considering they were already using the engine for those franchises.

Regards,
SB

 

[Ruskie]

Seems like smart move.Their designers/artist know to use it,it gets regular updates,especially lately.

Does Rocksteady use updated UE3 with lightmass for Batman AA?

 

[AlNom]

There goes AlStrong talking to himself again.

Look at all the links!

I do find 2014 particularly interesting from a "next-gen" point of view though.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That's a good point that the end date of the agreement coincides with when most are expecting the next gen consoles to possibly hit.

Leaves them open to consider moving to a different engine if it seems appropriate for those consoles.

Regards,
SB