14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone knows of the Epic's success with the Unreal Tournament franchise, due to their revolutionary Unreal Engine that makes it all happen on screen. And, as you probably knew already, Epic's job is mainly to make shooters, where the Unreal Engine comes in very handy to make things blow up or catch fire in a realistic manner. Yet, Epic seems to have underestimated the Engine's power. They're thinking of making other genres like RPGs and action games.
Epic's Cliff Bleszinski is quite upset about this and definitely wants a change as the Engine has massive potential: "...it frustrates the s**t out of me man. It's possible to do anything with this technology; it's very flexible technology. Because of the fact that we at Epic happen to love shooters and happen to be very good at shooters those are the games we make. You can do some amazing things with it. Developers need to get their heads together and figure out what kind of interesting things you can do with it."
Square Enix is already lined up to make some use of Epic's Engine in developing their games, so it's more than possible to start crafting other games, not from the FPS genre. Still, Epic is very fond of shooters and won't let go that easy, but then again, it doesn't necessarily have to be them who's making other games with their technology.
And just so you know, the Unreal Engine doesn't just come in handy for game developers. The third generation Unreal Engine (UE3) has been adopted by many non-gaming projects including construction simulation and design, training simulation, driving simulation, virtual reality shopping malls, movie storyboards, continuity, pre-visual, etc., even though the toolset and source code are specific for game development.