Unreal Tournament Series Shelved

Sierra Oscar

Epic have decided it best to shelve the series for now, and perhaps return in a number of years.

Epic Games Shelving Unreal Tournament Series

Its no real surprise. UT3 did not perform as well as was anticipated. Hopefully this will allow Epic to come up with some fresh concepts for the series going forward.

Stev_o

See i never undertstood how you can milk a series like that even more at the present time. They added alot to UT3 such as the Titans and new game modes etc but besides new weapons what else? It would be like if Valve released a new CSS every 2 years or something.

Amalgam

Anyone think UT3 was dumbed down a bit? The game had reached its peak before now.

projectmayhem

One of the problems with UT3 was that it's bigger brothers were polished and dominated the competition in terms of over the top, fun online gameplay. UT3 offered nothing new to a generation who had counter strike, team fortress, battlefield and (imo) more importantly, halo. The idea that Epic were going to take down consoles online and own that market was ridiculous with Halo on the market. Gears is a great game but fairly rubbish online (again, imo) in comparison to what's on offer.

The other argument is that PC gaming is dying a fast, but painful nevertheless death. Other then Valve, of course.

docdolittle

projectmayhem wrote: »

One of the problems with UT3 was that it's bigger brothers were polished and dominated the competition in terms of over the top, fun online gameplay. UT3 offered nothing new to a generation who had counter strike, team fortress, battlefield and (imo) more importantly, halo. The idea that Epic were going to take down consoles online and own that market was ridiculous with Halo on the market. Gears is a great game but fairly rubbish online (again, imo) in comparison to what's on offer.

The other argument is that PC gaming is dying a fast, but painful nevertheless death. Other then Valve, of course.

Em WHAT!? The Unreal engine has brought us LOTS of great games. I prefer using the UnrealEd to any other engine at the moment (cryengine is a close second :P ) You think all these games where more polished than gears of war?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games

There is the list of games that used the Unreal engine. I admit that the source engine has brought us some great games, but Unreal has brought us some equally as good games.

Anyway, I'm not too bothered about the wait, they are building the next engine for the next...next-gen game consoles anyway. I can't wait to make games with that engine either

Azza

Its probably just as well. UT3 was an inferior game in every department bar graphics to its predecessors. Epic alienated alot of the series established fanbase.

Docdolittle, this thread is referring to the game Unreal Tournament 3 not the the Unreal 3 engine which has been a major success.

projectmayhem wrote:

The other argument is that PC gaming is dying a fast, but painful nevertheless death. Other then Valve, of course.

The idea that PC gaming is dying has been utterly debunked by now. What PC gaming is in is a state of evolution. Weather this ongoing process of evolution is a good or a bad thing remains a matter of opinion.

docdolittle

Azza wrote: »

Its probably just as well. UT3 was an inferior game in every department bar graphics to its predecessors. Epic alienated alot of the series established fanbase.

Docdolittle, this thread is referring to the game Unreal Tournament 3 not the the Unreal 3 engine which has been a major success.



The idea that PC gaming is dying has been utterly debunked by now. What PC gaming is in is a state of evolution. Weather this ongoing process of evolution is a good or a bad thing remains a matter of opinion.

I know... but he compared it to games such as CS & TF2 on the source engine.. so I was open to contradict him with games on the Unreal engine... As I said in the post, there prob doing this to make the game/new engine out at the time of the next gerneration of consoles... ps4 or whatever they are going to call it and the next xbox so that they can target that market. I didn't mind Unreal 3, didn't think it was too bad, but as per the OP, it said in that link that even the mods that where made out of Unreal surpassed anything they could of done.

I agree with you on most of the rest of your post though.

Sand

Meh, the series was on a pretty awful trajectory anyhow.

Epic seemed to fluke UT, and every release since then has been progressively better graphics and worse gameplay with some gimmicks thrown in. You can trade on past glories for a while, but eventually more and more of you fanbase decide not to pick up the next release based on reputation alone and instead wait and see. Hence UT3, which was probably barely on peoples radar given the battering the series reputation has taken.

They seem to be quite good at making game engines, not so good at designing games. They should probably specialise at making engines to sell to game developers.

As for PC gaming, its been dying for what.... 10 - 15 years now? Whats been established here is that Epic makes bad PC games and has decided to stop. Thats probably a good thing for everyone concerned.

Jazzy

they buggered up the deathmatch.
onslaught / warfare was random, boring and a novelty. was a big mess to play
deathmatch- wise quake was light years ahead. heck ut2004 was more fun in dm despite the over dominance of the hitscan weapons (all aim-no brain would win quite a lot)
ut3 was just pretty awful in general. it had appeal to non-fans i reckon but there was bigger, better, flashier and better marketed games out there

Naikon

Not surprised, UT3 was awful, and still no Linux client:mad:

Sierra Oscar

I just think the UT series has lost its appeal for people at the moment. It needs a break.

Give it a few years, and the potential hype surrounding the re-emergence of UT will be immense, and very good for business.

Naikon

Well, they have stated that they are focussing on UT as a long
term stratagy, so at least they have pulled the plug on the series.

Sierra Oscar

Naikon wrote: »

Well, they have stated that they are focussing on UT as a long
term stratagy, so at least they have pulled the plug on the series.

Have not pulled the plug I assume you meant to say.

Indeed. They have Gears Of War to work on at the moment.:)

projectmayhem

docdolittle wrote: »

Em WHAT!? The Unreal engine has brought us LOTS of great games. I prefer using the UnrealEd to any other engine at the moment (cryengine is a close second :P ) You think all these games where more polished than gears of war?

I didn't say anything about any other games. My argument is referring to UT3 specifically. Nothing else.

Azza wrote: »

What PC gaming is in is a state of evolution.

What's it evolving into? I have a high end expensive PC that has had nothing new bought for it since the Crysis expansion. All I play on it is flight sim and Valve titles. Hardly pumping money into it. And I want to!

Also, you can see ATI/nVidia going after less powerful markets like netbooks/laptops and stuff to give them some graphical power, as well as touting the use of GPU's for general processing stuff. Hardly pushing the idea of the PC gaming industry as awesome. Also, NPD don't track PC sales anymore. They just use steam, basically.

Reading a few articles just now (to justify my argument) the only thing PC gaming is headlining in 2009 is that it'll shrink less then console gaming. But it's hard to shrink when you only have 14% of the market to begin with. Just look at Epic games cancelling UT3 for a while, instead focusing on Gears of War on consoles. UT is a stable for PC gaming, and now it's over for a while.

Azza

Why would game developers make games to cater for the high end PC gaming market. It costs a fortune to do so yet the people with high end gaming rigs only make a small percentage of PC gamers, probably in the region of 5%. High end PC gamers know how to pirate games as well which further puts developers off from making games for that market. Game development keeps going up and thats why more and more games are going multiplatform.

Epic where asked a while back, did they consider Crysis or the Cryengine 2 a significant rival and they said yes from a technical perspective it was a rival but they where not a serious rival as competitng and winning in the market area that Crysis was in would not be worth the effort as its so small and hard to make a profit in it.

NPD don't track retail sales cause they where useless, they did not cover all the major American game retails and they had stuff like anti virus software being mixed in as well. Its better to track Digital Distrubtition anyway (and they track more than just Steam in that area). Retailing figures have being falling for years in the PC gaming market but they are more than compensated for by digital distrubition. The PC gaming market is infact growing but at no where near the rate of console gaming.

As for whats it evolving into, MMO's and casual games are doing spectular on PC at the moment. Micro transaction based games are starting to appear. RTS games remain strong on PC because until the console allow keyboard and mouse use its a genre they can't replicate well. RPG ands FPS have gone multiplatform for the most part and the ports of these vary in quaility from good to awful. Time and again we here people moan at PC centric developers selling out when they go multiplatfrom but no song and dance is made when console centric developers start putting there formerly exclusive console titles on PC as well.

Sierra Oscar

Azza wrote: »

Why would game developers make games to cater for the high end PC gaming market.

Plenty of developers are able to cater for both the high end market and the joe soap with technology two generations old.

One of the issues with UT3 seems to be that it is the 8th game in a series which has stagnated. The game just did not seem to offer enough to get the long standing community playing UT 2004 to jump aboard. For this reason, Epic are sort of to blame for their own success as UT 2004 still remains very strong with an active community.

All the same, UT3 did not perform as badly as we are all lead to believe. As of March of last year one million copies of the game were sold in retail stores. That was even before the free expansion was released.

Stephen

I hated UT3, and I quite liked UT2004 before that. I'm also tired of FPS games featuring dudes in ridiculously massive body armour.

Azza

Sierra Oscar wrote:

Plenty of developers are able to cater for both the high end market and the joe soap with technology two generations old.

There is a few PC centric developers who can do it. GSC did a good job with Stalker generally speaking with scalable graphics settings. There are a few but generally speaking its not the way the wind is blowing.

What you'll find is that most developers are multiplatform and don't want to really push graphics technology that is exclusive to PC as they can't stick it on to the console versions and that the expense of developing such techology for the PC alone isn't really worth it. Thats why most ports are only slightly superior to the console version graphically. (not talking about resolution). PC graphics technology to a large extent looks to be stalled until the next generation of consoles. There are exceptions of course (Shattered Horizon and Project Offset as examples and Colin Mcare Dirt 2 will have DX11) but by and large this most games will be around the level of current console graphics.

Also I would not call the remaing UT 2004 playerbase big but I do agree that it has better gameplay than Ut3. UT classic was a bigger success than UT2004 however.

projectmayhem

Azza wrote: »

Why would game developers make games to cater for the high end PC gaming market.

Well my argument was along the lines that they're not making games for high end machines. Look at the posts over on rockpapershotgun... most of them are nowhere near high-end rendering etc.

Azza wrote: »

It costs a fortune to do so yet the people with high end gaming rigs only make a small percentage of PC gamers, probably in the region of 5%. High end PC gamers know how to pirate games as well which further puts developers off from making games for that market. Game development keeps going up and thats why more and more games are going multiplatform.

You're very right here. What's more is that trends show games released on PC as well as consoles don't fare as well on the PC. The market is too massive with consoles these days. I hate FPSing on a console but it's just so easy that you have to do it.

Azza wrote: »

but they are more than compensated for by digital distrubition. The PC gaming market is infact growing but at no where near the rate of console gaming.

I was with you up to this point. Digital distribution is a huge deal, but it's still not beating retail in sales. Retail is just expensive to track, and the big issue is piracy in PC gaming in fairness.

Also the market is shrinking. By 1.something billion this year alone. Just in the PC market. The console market with contract too, but not by much. With only 14% of the market share, the PC market can't afford to shrink much.

Azza wrote: »

As for whats it evolving into, MMO's and casual games are doing spectular on PC at the moment. Micro transaction based games are starting to appear. RTS games remain strong on PC because until the console allow keyboard and mouse use its a genre they can't replicate well. RPG ands FPS have gone multiplatform for the most part and the ports of these vary in quaility from good to awful. Time and again we here people moan at PC centric developers selling out when they go multiplatfrom but no song and dance is made when console centric developers start putting there formerly exclusive console titles on PC as well.

MMO's aren't taken off the way you'd like to think. They start, last a year and shut down. Unless you're WoW it's useless to try to pimp MMO's as a saviour of PC gaming. In fact, WoW is the only positive statistic in PC gaming.

RPG probably is only big on PC but Command&Conquer sold well on the 360 IIRC. There's also only one major RPG out this year of a AAA pedigree; Starcraft.

Also, no one's calling a developer a sellout for putting games on consoles. It's just a shame that more often then not PC-centric developers (as you call them) don't really make much effort. I'm looking at Valve quite specifically here.

Azza

Yes digital disturbition is not beating retail sales outright but its far bigger than the decline in retail sales. Infact some sources have said its rapidly approaching the 50% mark of all PC games sale and will exceed that number within the next year or so.

If the market contracts this year both on PC and consoles its probably to do with external infulences likes the recession rather than a general decline. With digital distrubtion PC gaming has been growing for the last few years just not at the rate the consoles where, but thats only if you look at in the traditional sense. Gamers like us may not be interested in casual games or MMO's, we prefer our traditional genres like FPS/RTS/RPG etc but thats not the whole market. Genres come and go out of popularity, the point and click adventure game has long since fallen from the lime light. Platforming games fell out of favor on the consoles. You can't just arbitarly discount WOW or other MMO's that are doing well which I'm not pimping as the saviour of PC gaming but its currently a genre thats very popular. MMO's don't need WOW's subscribber numbers to turn a decent profit. Yes some MMO's fail just like any game in any genre can but WoW is not the only success story.

EA reckon the PC platform is becoming the biggest gaming platform.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10234654-62.html

Command and Conquer did peform moderately well on Xbox but that did not save it from loosing CnC 4 which is a PC exclusive.

When you talk about about only one AAA RPG and mention Starcraft I assume you mean't RTS. Firstly Starcraft will probably in all likelyhood not be released this year and even with all the hype no one knows if its going be good. This year we had excellent RTS games like Demigod, DOW II and Men of War. Not to mention Supreme Commander 2 is on its way, but that will likely compete with Starcraft 2 next year.

projectmayhem

Azza wrote: »

Yes digital disturbition is not beating retail sales outright but its far bigger than the decline in retail sales. Infact some sources have said its rapidly approaching the 50% mark of all PC games sale and will exceed that number within the next year or so.

More sources will quote far more games being pirated then bought, digitally or otherwise. There lies PC markets biggest issue.

Azza wrote: »

EA reckon the PC platform is becoming the biggest gaming platform.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10234654-62.html

Well my first comment here is to ignore most thing John Riccitello says. The other thing is the number that there are a billion PC's out there. He's right. There are. But they ain't playing games I'm afraid. EA previously made a comment about releasing games in China. You can't. There are more PC gamers there then in the west at this point (allegedly) but they all pirate games. The only way to do it there is give the games free and work in advertising.

Market number 1 is the West, of which PC gaming holds a tiny percentage of the market, and that's not going to become the market leader all of a sudden. Trust me, I'd love PC gaming to dominate, but it just won't.

Azza wrote: »

Command and Conquer did peform moderately well on Xbox but that did not save it from loosing CnC 4 which is a PC exclusive.

Well I do recall C&C3 not being on consoles and then EA backflipped quite predictably so don't hold on to that thought just yet!

Azza wrote: »

When you talk about about only one AAA RPG and mention Starcraft I assume you mean't RTS. Firstly Starcraft will probably in all likelyhood not be released this year and even with all the hype no one knows if its going be good. This year we had excellent RTS games like Demigod, DOW II and Men of War. Not to mention Supreme Commander 2 is on its way, but that will likely compete with Starcraft 2 next year.

Sorry yes I meant RTS. Too many acronyms. I take your point but I bet I can name every major release on PC, and count them on my fingers. But there's 3 or 4 times the number of huge releases on consoles. It's a stronger market, by miles. PC is not what it thinks it is, or what EA want you to believe it is with their "excitement". Battlefield Heroes did great, but Battlefield 1943 dominated on consoles.

Azza

Yes piracy is a major issue. No doubt about it. Even a casual glance at any torrent site will prove how massive it really is. Without a doubt more pirated games are played than purchased legit.

At the same time if a game like Crysis is pirated say 2 million times, that isn't lost 2 million lost sales. No one can actually put a figure on it. Games companies never say 1 copy pirated = 1 sale lost. The actual figure of lost sales is probably closer to 5% or 10% which is still a massive number of pirated copies. It is a major factor that infulences games development on that platform and inhibits growth but that that doesn't change the fact that grwoth in digital distrubtion has exceeded the decline of PC game retail sales.

Another issue that the PC platform has that consoles do not is that there is no unified force driving the platform. Compared to the massive marketing efforts that goes to the consoles its no suprise that the PC has difficulty competing in the traditional genres that we are accustomed to playing. There is also many perceptions both true and false about PC gaming that also handicap the platform. People have to think about upgrades, compability and software conflicts which can drive them more towards the 'plug and play' consoles.

There is a billion PC out there and the majority are playing games on them. Just not mainstream FPS and RPG's. They are playing online games, flash games, casual games etc.

As for China and Asia both massive PC markets, they have different cultures over there and different business models. Costs have to to be lower over there like in WoW and in game advertisement and micro-transactions are the key to this market. But you over value the Wests importance to the market. The reason some console developers like Capcom are only now properly supporting the PC market is that they want to better serve the Asian market. Generally in the west consoles rules the market place but in some countires the PC remains dominate like Germany and Russia. Russia is more and more taking up the mantel as the best PC developers. EA are not talking about the Western market alone (Which is really two sperate markets American and Europe) they are talking globally.

As for CnC 3 not going to consoles that was not true. It was always planned for a console release. I can't imagine EA back flipping on there current decision to have CnC 4 a PC exclusive.
Second last question in this Q&A.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/commandandconquer4/news.html?sid=6213111&page=2

Do you have any numbers about Battlefield 1943 on consoles? I know it did well but how can you say it dominated?
Battlefiled Heroes has over 1 million registered accounts.

Sierra Oscar

Azza wrote: »

Yes piracy is a major issue. No doubt about it. Even a casual glance at any torrent site will prove how massive it really is. Without a doubt more pirated games are played than purchased legit.

Indeed, however PC developers are slowly adapting to combat piracy by introducing micro-transactions and anti-piracy measures.

People dont seem to realize that piracy is also an issue on consoles, one which is growing. Look at Fallout 3 - the launch was ruined as the Xbox 360 version was pirated weeks before release and put up on the Internet.

Developers for consoles are going to be facing the same piracy crisis as the PC industry is currently experiencing down the road - and they will also have to adapt. I suspect they will end up going through the same "adaption" phase the PC Games Industry is going through currently.

Azza

Piracy on consoles (not referring to handheld like the PSP and DS) is far lower than PC.

Checkout any torrent site and while console piracy isn't insignificant its about 10 times lower than PC piracy as research for the article I link below points out.
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html


The PS3 is free of piracy at the moment.
The Xbox 360 has to be chipped and if detected online the Xbox Live account can be banned.

PC games are much easier to pirate.

PC developers have not been slow to try and counter piracy at all, they have been trying for years usually with very limited success. Nothing seems to indicate they have got on top of the problem yet.

Kidchameleon

For me UT2004 was the peak. The developers always said that one of the main points of UT was that it would cater for 1 player sessions hence the UT bots were very clever. With UT3 the 1 player was almost an insult...

Jazzy

www.quakelive.com