Unreal 4 Engine at Least Four Years Away

Mike Capps from Epic is one of the people invited at Microsoft's Gamefest 2008 to talk about games development using the Unreal 3 Engine, which is the most licensed middleware application in the world of videogames, and to detail the plans that Epic Games has regarding the future development of the engine.

Tim Sweeney, one of the founders of Epic, earlier said that the PC focus that characterized the company since its early years was beginning to fade away, being replaced by a much more business sensible console focus. He mentioned that this would be clear in the design of the Unreal 4 Engine and in the possibilities it would offer.

Mike Capps reinforced that line of though when he stated, quite clearly, that "We've got Unreal 4 in production right now... it's going to be in the next console generation; our rough guess is 2012 - 2018".

With all the discussions about the PC gaming market coming to a standstill (not really true, when you count MMOs and other business models) and with console sales skyrocketing, especially when talking about the Nintendo Wii, Epic's new strategy makes sense.

But the question regarding the existence of next gen consoles (think Xbox 720, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Wii2) by 2012 is a tough one. All the companies have invested a lot in the current gen hardware; both Sony and Microsoft are insisting that their consoles will have at least a ten year life span. A smaller time frame would mean that the consoles will not be profitable enough to have a new generation under development. And if there are no next gen consoles, then the entire "console focus" of the Unreal 4 Engine will not be worth much.

So, when reading Mike Capps' statement, make sure to think of 2018 rather than of 2012.