Epic and EA Extend Unreal 3 Engine Agreement

[bapenguin]

Epic sent along a short press release announcing they had signed an agreement with Electronic Arts, extending the contract on their already existing Unreal Engine 3 deal. The original deal had EA's Army of Two and Medal of Honor Airborne using the Unreal Engine 3, the new deal is said to cover 5 upcoming titles - though they aren't being announced at this time.

Full press release after the jump.

Regardless of any lawsuits, the Unreal Engine 3 is becoming the de facto standard in the industry.

[bapenguin]

EPIC AND EA ANNOUNCE EXTENSION OF UNREAL ENGINE 3 AGREEMENT FOR SELECT UPCOMING TITLES

State of the Art Engine To Be Used Alongside EA’s Proprietary Tools & Technology Library

Redwood City, Calif., April 8, 2008 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Epic Games, Inc. today announced that they have expanded their current license agreement. Under the terms of the new agreement, EA will have the right to incorporate the Unreal Engine 3 in more than five upcoming titles currently under development. EA’s original Unreal Engine 3 license agreement was signed in 2006, and this new agreement reflects EA’s confidence in the Unreal Engine by providing EA development teams with industry-leading tools and technologies to best serve the needs of each game.

Under its initial Unreal Engine 3 license with Epic Games, EA has been utilizing Unreal Engine 3 on several important cross-platform games including: Medal of Honor Airborne™ and Army of Two™. Details of the additional games in development under the new license agreement are not being released at this time.

“With the largest and most talented studio operation in the world, it’s critical for us to give our studio teams the best tools they need to make great games,” said Frank Gibeau, President, at EA. “This agreement reflects our commitment to Epic’s technology which, in combination with our own cutting-edge systems, allows us to create ground breaking hits.”

“Epic is committed to providing EA with the premier development infrastructure, tools and technology for its upcoming games,” said Mark Rein, vice president, Epic Games. “We’re extremely excited that EA has chosen to expand their use of Unreal Engine 3 and we can’t wait to see more of the great games they will produce with it.”

Unreal Engine 3 is a complete game development framework for next-generation consoles and DirectX10-equipped PCs, providing the vast array of core technologies, content creation tools, and support infrastructure required by top game developers. Every aspect of the Unreal Engine has been designed with ease of content creation and programming in mind, with the goal of putting as much power as possible in the hands of artists and designers to develop assets in a visual environment with minimal programmer assistance; and to give programmers a highly modular, scalable and extensible framework for building, testing, and shipping games in a wide range of genres.

[jromero]

For the love of God, use it for fucking Madden.

[Borys]

MoH: Airborne was ACE. The game got severly overshadowed by CoD4, which is a shame cause I liked MoH: A way better than CoD4.

[Qoz]

Yeah - Airborne was pretty good!
I liked how the battles changed depending on where you landed.
The AI made a decent job of seeking you out.

[Grey]

youre kidding... MoH:A is such a cheap ww2 shooter.

The game came out 2 month before CoD4 and wasnt "overshadowed" - it was ignored because it was a averange shooter and nothing special.

[Telefrog]

Regardless of any lawsuits, the Unreal Engine 3 is becoming the de facto standard in the industry.

Because it's badass.

[karak]

MoH: Airborne was ACE. The game got severly overshadowed by CoD4, which is a shame cause I liked MoH: A way better than CoD4.
Indeed. I picked this up as a random rental and within a couple hours had 10 of my chums trading the controller. Into the wee hours of the morning we played that. I dug the ability to land anywhere in the gamemap and still have different missions pop up. Awesome fun.

[Itchyeyes]

At least one of those 5 games has to be a Mass Effect sequel.

[Qoz]

youre kidding... MoH:A is such a cheap ww2 shooter.
The game came out 2 month before CoD4 and wasnt "overshadowed" - it was ignored because it was a averange shooter and nothing special.You should probably learn to type "I belive.. " or "My opinion is.." before typing this stuff. You write as if you speak of something certain, but the forum postings show this is clearly not the case. The game actually had some good stuff. All my friends liked it too (completed the game) and they seldom like games for more than 30 minutes.

[dark_inchworm]

You should probably learn to type "I belive.. " or "My opinion is.." before typing this stuff. You write as if you speak of something certain, but the forum postings show this is clearly not the case.

Madness?

This is Evil Avatar.

[Grey]

You should probably learn to type "I belive.. " or "My opinion is.." before typing this stuff. You write as if you speak of something certain, but the forum postings show this is clearly not the case. The game actually had some good stuff. All my friends liked it too (completed the game) and they seldom like games for more than 30 minutes.

Thats why my nickname is located on the left side of the post. It says "hello, this is an human opinion and therefore subjective" :)

But in this case... I thought it was a fact (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2582-Zero-Punctuation-MOH-Airborne) ;)

Oh and I'm of course speaking about the PC version, not 360. I dont know which version you enjoyed - probably the 360 version...

[51|RandoM]

I think MOH:Airborne deserves more credit than it gets.

Is it in a tired setting? Yes.
From a tried franchise? Yes.
Does it divert drastically from history to introduce bizarre sci-fi Nazi stormtroopers? Yes. (cough, SilentStorm, cough). :)

That said, it does do some new things. The parachute mechanic is pretty cool, as is the sandbox way the maps and objectives play out because of it. I'd really like to see somebody make a similar game with the same mechanic but with much, much better enemy AI---which, IMHO, is really MOH:A's biggest failure. Seems to me it would work well for any special ops type of game, plan your insertion point, your objective order and have your squad night HALO jump at the start of the mission.

The parachute jumping/sandbox mechanic gives MOH:A's singleplayer campaign replayability(sp?) sorely lacking from most FPS games.

[Oddmaker]

At least one of those 5 games has to be a Mass Effect sequel.

Wasnt Mass Effect using its own engine and not Unreal? I hope they dont use Unreal in the sequel.

[digitalErich]

Project IGI3 perhaps, Random? I think there was a #2...not sure, though.

[GigaFuzz]

Wasnt Mass Effect using its own engine and not Unreal? I hope they dont use Unreal in the sequel.

Mass Effect did use UE3. Big clue: texture streaming.

[Oddmaker]

Ah I always thought Bio used there own engine.. awell.

[Pluvious]

oh joy more games with texture pop in, I can't wait. >rolleyes<

[The Continental]

Does anyone else even make middleware for this generation of hardware? It seems everything is UE3 nowadays.

[51|RandoM]

Project IGI3 perhaps, Random? I think there was a #2...not sure, though.

I never played that series, were they any good?

oh joy more games with texture pop in, I can't wait. >rolleyes<

Well, in defense of UE3, texture pop-in is really a side effect of a developer doing a piss-poor job of using UE3's streaming technology, IMNSHO. It hardly ever happens in Gears except during some multiplayer map loads. It sticks out like a sore thumb in Mass Effect because they decided to cater to the Core unit owners and not take advantage of the hard drive the rest of us have on our 360s. That means they're relying on the DVD drive and all 360 DVD drives are not created equal. There is a spot on one of the major missions where there is a NPC that my 360 will *never* load the high-res texture for in Mass Effect.

[digitalErich]

I never played that series, were they any good?
IGI was notable in that it was one of the first FPS games that took place in worlds that were larger than a room or building, Tribes and Codename Eagle being the other games in that group. Just like how Tribes "cheated" by using a Mech-game engine, IGI used the engine from some fighter jet game to get its large, sweeping mountain top maps.

It probably doesn't stand up today, but it was fun for it's day. After playing claustrophobic Quake games and Unreal, zip-lining down a high voltage power line for a mile in the middle of the Alps and assaulting enemy bases from any angle was something special back then.

[thomasc]

Ah I always thought Bio used there own engine.. awell.

Mass Effect was an exception

[Qoz]

Thats why my nickname is located on the left side of the post. It says "hello, this is an human opinion and therefore subjective" This is how many postings on Evil Avatar works. Generaly I don't have a problem with it because it is often people with a good point or with a certain accepted fact who do it. It is just out-of-place to judge something in very general and absolute way (with no arguments), when it is so apparent in the thread, that we are discussing something people have very different opinions about.

The thread discussed how people felt about MOH:A. People explained WHY they felt so. Your post was like a parent telling his kids that "thats just the way it is". You will make a much more impressive point if you used some arguments instead.

[Grey]

The thread discussed how people felt about MOH:A. People explained WHY they felt so. Your post was like a parent telling his kids that "thats just the way it is". You will make a much more impressive point if you used some arguments instead.

WW2 *again* (seriously, its enough), short, medicore to dumb A.I. mostly boring staged, lack of a quality MP (though I had some fun times online - if I finaly managed to get into a game...)

Best thing about that game was the slowmo effect when you upgraded your weapon. Things like that, little action details, are more then appropriate for modern games since you cant reinvent the wheel. A shooter will be a shooter for eternity, but you still can push that genre to be kind of innovative and more fun. MoH:A didnt.

[MacD]

Bad texture streaming isn't so much a UE3 thing as an xbox360-having-low-memory thing, I'd say.

Also, bap, you should know better than tacking on such a statement. Epic ain't the only middleware vendor on the block, even if it does have a large marketshare.

[Pluvious]

All consoles have a deficiency in the memory department. I wish they would put in 1 or 2GB of RAM in those things.. but alas, we are stuck with barely enough to get by. :(

[Schnoogs]

All consoles have a deficiency in the memory department. I wish they would put in 1 or 2GB of RAM in those things.. but alas, we are stuck with barely enough to get by. :(

It would almost be nice if the next Xbox had only a slighter faster CPU and GPU and just ton more ram and a big HD