The studio isn't going back to the series that made it famous many years ago

Sep 23, 2011 07:37 GMT  ·  By

Just after it has released Gears of War 3 into critical and commercial success, Epic Games, the developer of the series, has revealed that it's not going back to its dormant Unreal franchise, despite the fact that it's the series that put the company on the map in terms of shooters and graphics engines.

[ADMARk=1]Epic Games struck gold back in 2006 with its Gears of War title, impressing the pretty large number of Xbox 360 owners with tight third person shooter mechanics and cover-based gameplay, becoming the second most popular series for the Microsoft console, overtaken only by Halo.

Now, just as the third game has been released, which completes the planned trilogy, many fans of the developer are expecting it to start working on a new project, probably something in the Unreal series, which hasn't seen a new game since the lackluster Unreal Tournament 3 in 2007.

That's not going to happen, at least according to the president of the company, Mike Capps, who talked with Forbes about the new projects currently underway at the studio.

"Epic's core game making philosophy of 'when everyone says it's done, keep polishing!' came from our experiences with Unreal Tournament," he said. "That's the beginning of our quality-focused studio DNA. Unreal and Unreal Tournament continue to have a huge influence on the studio here, even though we're not currently working on an Unreal IP project."

The Unreal series helped Epic Games establish itself as a shooter expert and propelled its proprietary Unreal Engine to massive sales and popularity, being one of the most used technologies in the games industry these days.

Capps does emphasize that, while Epic itself won't be working on such a project, its smaller groups, like Polish studio People Can Fly, which recently launched Bulletstorm at the beginning of the year, are working on all sorts of other things.

"We learned that People Can Fly can make a really fun project, and we learned how to work together well - and that's going to show in what they're doing next," he added.

What do you think? Should Epic Games release a new Unreal title or should it work on something completely new?