mckmas8808
Legend
I bolded everything that seem really important to console gaming. It a pretty good read.
So what do you guys think?
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VAPORIZER REVIEW
GameDAILY BIZ: First, I'd like to congratulate you on the great presentations that Epic provided for the Sony and Microsoft conferences. The Unreal Engine technology truly looks stunning.
Mark Rein: Thank you... the world's first demo on a PlayStation 3! PROFILE
Mark Rein
Vice President & Co-Founder
Epic Games
History: In 1991 Mark, along with Tim Sweeney, James Schmalz and Cliff Bleszinski, began what was then known as Epic MegaGames, Inc. Work on the first Unreal commenced in 1994, but it wasn't published until 1998.
Highlights: Unreal Engine has powered over 50 titles selling a cumulative total of over 16 million copies, including Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six 3 (Ubisoft); Deus Ex and Thief 3 (Eidos); Lineage II (NCsoft); Harry Potter and Ultima X (EA); and more.
Currently: Mark and Epic Games are currently working on Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 2007, both of which make use of Unreal Engine 3.0 technology.
BIZ: Now that you've seen the next-gen systems from the "big 3" and have been thoroughly exposed to the Xbox 360 and PS3, what's your perspective on the market going forward?
MR: I'll start off by saying that I actually don't know much about what Nintendo's got going on... but from everything they said it's going to be a lot more powerful than what they had before. Sony and Microsoft both have awesome systems; we're just thrilled with all the stuff that's going on in that area. I think Sony showed off a huge amount of technical prowess and had just amazing demos. Clearly they are in very good shape. And the system erases one of the things that was a stumbling block for us in the past in that it's really easy to develop for. It's on par with what Microsoft's got now.
And I thought Microsoft did a really good job showing the rich user interface of the machine, which if they are ever going to sell a billion???I don't know about that number???that's certainly the right thing to do. They showed that anybody can use it. It's got built-in functionality; it's not just a disk eater. It'll actually do some things, and that's cool because you'll see both [camps] doing that. I was totally blown away by the idea of an HD IP camera for my PlayStation 3; I will definitely be buying one of those and sending one to my parents so we can do video conferencing and show them our kids growing up because we live a couple thousand miles away. I think all that kind of stuff is great and I'm really excited. I think the next generation will be bigger than this one because they are expanding the scope, and if you get devices into people's homes even if they don't think they're gamers they will become gamers.
BIZ: You guys recently announced that the latest Unreal Engine would be one of SCEI's official middleware packages for the PS3...
MR: [Interrupts] They haven't started up the program yet, but basically our announcement is that we're in the minute they start it.
BIZ: Okay, from what you said before, you seem to be leaning a bit more towards the PS3.
MR: Well, we've been an Xbox 360 middleware vendor since GDC, so we're making games for both platforms. If we want to be a successful middleware company, we don't really have a choice. We can't lean or choose one or the other. We're just going to have amazing empowerment on both machines and then our customers will make games. There'll be lots of people, for example, who will go the extra mile and write a lot of extra Cell code above and beyond what our own game might use that really makes it an exclusive Sony thing and there'll be a lot of people who will do that on the Microsoft side. Heck, Microsoft has already licensed our engine for some games. So to be a successful middleware developer, you've got to be in the middle.
And we're also obviously big on PC as well; we don't want to forget PC. I think the PC is actually going to grow because of the next-gen consoles. I think we're going to get better, richer experiences on PC thanks to the fact that people are going to be designing games for such high-end hardware. And eventually that hardware will be on PC as well.
BIZ: Every year, there seems to be an article on the "death" of the PC gaming market...
MR: [interrupts] Bulls**t, total bulls**t...
BIZ: So I take it you think the PC games market will be just fine?
MR: The PC market is going to grow, mark my words. It's going to be stronger... I mean, both of these companies [MS and Sony] are using components from the guys who make PC cards. And the base technology in both Xbox 360 and PS3 will eventually be on PC as well and will eventually be surpassed on PC, at a huge premium for what it costs to buy a console of course. But people will buy them and hardcore gamers and not so hardcore gamers will benefit from it. I think the entire game business is going to grow tremendously.
BIZ: What does Epic Games see in the portable market? Is there any idea of getting into that business?
MR: I love my PSP, but no that's not us. We're always about cutting edge technology... but you know what's going to happen now in this generation???hopefully 5-6 years from now Sony will bring out a handheld with a Cell chip in it and RSX. Microsoft really isn't into the handhelds; they've got Windows instead. But as soon as one of our engines can run nicely on these handhelds, then we're in the business. But our philosophy is to stay on the absolute cutting edge, and then if mobile solutions come, then great we'll support them.
BIZ: You've had a number of companies sign up to use your Unreal Engine 3.0 technology...
MR: [interrupts] Very smart companies. [laughs]
BIZ: Is there one company in particular that you'd really love to come on board and use your technology?
MR: Oh absolutely. We're standing here about 200 feet from the Rockstar booth and you could totally do Grand Theft Auto in our engine now, and it would be amazing. And to be honest, a lot of companies are going to do GTA knockoffs in our engine anyway. So yeah, I'd like to have everybody. We would love to have everybody in the industry using our technology.
BIZ: Have you had any talks with Rockstar or is that something just on your wish list?
MR: We talk with everyone... And Take-Two will publish games that use our engine, so it's not like that's never going to happen.
BIZ: What are your thoughts on the escalating costs of game development as we head into the next generation?
MR: I think a lot of that's being exaggerated. I mean, we're looking at 30-50 percent increases in the cost of making our games. Yet, I'm not just talking about upgrading our games. We're making much richer games. Go look at UT 2007 in the Midway booth and go look at Gears of War in the Microsoft booth, and we are making much, much richer games than anything Epic's ever made in the past. And we're still seeing only a 30-50 percent cost increase. Now that's because we have Unreal Engine 3.0. We have great tools. We have great technology; we don't have to do a lot of extra coding for scripting and things like that. Because if you want to have richer events, you need to have an environment that lets you create them. And they do take time, but our kind of secret weapon that I like to call the "antidote to budget bloat" is this Unreal Kismet that Alan's going to demonstrate here at the NVIDIA booth in about 15 minutes. Unreal Kismet is a visual scripting system and it puts all the programming power in the hands of the designers, whether they've ever programmed or not???visually, almost like putting together flow charts.
It works really well; we've done some amazing things with it. Our guys even created a racing game in one day with a random track generator. So we think that's the secret. The same thing goes with shaders. We have the world's best shader system. One of the questions that the Chairman of NVIDIA was going to ask in his speech was, "How hard was it to take your shaders from PC to PS3?" But it's like we scratched the question because we don't take them from one or the other. We just play them???they're the exact same, no conversion, nothing. And the same with Xbox 360. So we have a great tool that the artists can use instead of having the programmers do it... In the past 100 percent of our gameplay scripts were done by a programmer. Now, maybe a programmer will touch 20-25 percent of them. It's a huge savings. So our programmers can be much more productive and can work on much more important, high-level things.
I really think there's a lot of covering up going on [when it comes to dev costs]. People are covering up for incompetence and mismanagement and not using middleware, trying to create their own, and they're just trying to cover up for that by saying, "Oh yeah, it's going to cost way more." I also think they're trying to sucker consumers into trying to get them ready to pay more for games and I think that's crazy. If Microsoft is right and we're ever going to try and reach a billion [consumers] prices are going to have to come down, not up.
BIZ: Well, what do you foresee? Will the prices on games be going up in next-gen?
MR: No, I don't think users are going to pay more than 50 bucks for a game. I won't. I'll stop buying games when they go above 50 bucks. It's just too much. I'm hoping what happens instead is that the price of games comes down as we reach larger audiences???as you can take your PS3 game and also ship it on PC; as you can make games that aren't so crazy huge but still look amazing and incredible. I believe the price of games needs to come down if they want to grow the business. And I think they will. Unreal Tournament 2004 we priced at $10 less than Unreal Tournament 2003 and we sold very well.
BIZ: So you guys recently acquired the Reality engine. What does that bring to your business, or was it simply about removing competition?
MR: No, what happened was my partner Tim Sweeney came to me and said, "Have you ever seen this Reality engine?" And I go, "Yeah I've heard of it." So he said, "The guy who wrote this is a genius; I want to hire him." "So what's it going to take to hire him," I said. Tim said, "Well, we're probably going to have to buyout his engine." So that's what it took to hire him. And now we have two Tim Sweeneys. This guy is so smart. He not only created the engine single-handedly, or nearly single-handedly, but he also writes the documentation, the tutorials, runs the website, manages the business, talks to customers???this is exactly where Tim Sweeney was 8 years ago let's say with Epic and Unreal Engine. So we had to have this guy, and as you can see from the screenshots on Artificial Reality's website, it's a great engine. He really does know his stuff.
So the real motive there wasn't to squash a competitor; it was to hire a really, really smart guy. I mean it's tough to get really, really smart guys, and we had to bring him in from England as well. So it's not easy and when you find somebody you have to be willing to say, "Look we have all these licensees who rely on us to be great, not just good but great. Epic has to be great so that everybody else can succeed on top of Epic." So if it means having to spend a little bit of money to buy an engine and get someone we know is great, that's a totally worthwhile investment for us and our customers.
BIZ: Okay, any final comments or anything you'd like to add before we wrap this up?
MR: Did you mention that we had the world's first demo on PlayStation 3? [big grin]
BIZ: Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you Mark.
So what do you guys think?
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VAPORIZER REVIEW
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