The Wii U
"officially" will not run UE4, this is no surprise to anyone here.
(I said as much) An official confirmation of sorts from Geoff Keighley, via twitter, courtesy of Nirolak at Neo-Gaf:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=475868 I said that it was a
transitional console, I didn't mince words. This term was meant to clearly deliniate the Wii U as beyond this console generation's visual & feature set capabilities, though not occupying the same technical power space as the Orbis & Durango.
I view this as a non-issue however, the Wii U is capable of more than what the Unreal 3 engine provides.
(on current gen. systems) Gearbox's Wii U version of Aliens:CM should show this within the framework of UE3 cross-platform development.
(esp.within their custom lighting engine) 4A Games' Metro:LL should follow suit as well on their proprietary engine.
(some programmers over there are extremely gifted, & want to push the technical envelope even further) Proprietary Wii U engines will showcase this best however, as specific toolkits & feature sets are created to exploit the console's strengths. Expect more than just Retro's offering to truly
impress at E3. Nintendo has made some very strong 3rd party partnerships for both cross, as well as console exclusive software.
(even contacturally in some instances) This will not change once UE4 becomes widely accessible to developers. A repeat of the Wii's software demise is not in the cards I assure you. This also assumes that UE4 becomes the de facto middleware solution for the next generation.
Most developers will be utilizing Unreal 3 as a base early on regardless of Orbis's & Durango's ability to run UE4. As I posted earlier, MS's Durango's now going
"all in" with UE4 as of the GDC. Prior to the GDC the Durango wasn't compatible either. In any case, do you truly believe that UE4 won't be scalabe to an extent? Frostbite, Cryengine, etc certainty are. From purely an economic viewpoint, this scenario makes no sense.
