Unreal Engine runs into trouble

EPIC HAS ALREADY had one out-of-the-park hit on its latest Unreal engine with Xbox shooter Gears of War. Despite that title's popularity, however, there are plenty of questions being asked about the engine's capabilities, build status, and Epic's ability to deliver anything else.

These questions are being asked not least by Silicon Knights, top-flight developer of upcoming console title Too Human. The firm is suing Epic for failing to deliver key features and documentation on the engine in time for Too Human to keep up with development schedule - resulting in a sloppy showing at E3 last year and no release date yet in sight. Key features of the game engine - including those present in Gears of War but not in developer builds - were delivered super-late, maliciously, the firm says.

Silicon Knights alleges that the witholding of data was deliberate, but other licensees of the Unreal technology have spoken up in a somewhat spotty defence. Talking over at Shacknews, developers working on UE3 games suggest that Epic was just incompetent, not malicious.

What remains clear is that Epic is yet to deliver Unreal Tournament 3, its second in-house game based on the engine, and is still refusing to set a firm date for its release - perhaps suggesting that despite the appearance of Gears on the 360, Epic is having as much trouble with its own dev cycle as other licensees are.

Meanwhile, Sony is admitting to not helping out Epic as much as it could have done with the PS3, and is now standing up and saying that UE3 on PS3 is going to get a whole lot more effective from hereon out.

Speaking to Game Informer, Sony's Phil Harrison said that "If we're honest, we didn't do enough of a good job supporting them and getting them the tools and technology early enoug... Also, Epic isn't a huge company. They don't have unlimited resource. We have parachuted in some of our SWAT team of super engineers to help them. Specifically, to optimize for SPUs (synergistic processing units) which are the point of difference that the Cell processor has."

Harrison seems to be hoping that this will put some energy behind UE3 development and will help out those looking to release cross-platform franchises based on the new engine.