I was going to engage in witty discourse and possibly a passive agressive exchange of words.

That's relevant to my enjoyment of this forum. 

Enjoy, just don't turn it into a flame war otherwise it's not enjoyable for anyone. Harmony... (at last)

I'm finding that philosophy distinctly hard to follow on this forum. Misinformation is my and your worst enemy and I will purge it from existence.

You're too vague, I don't understand what you're referring to. Do you mean Jumpin' is misinformed? Is that why you asked?

Sure, misinformation happens, around here like everywhere. Of course, given this isn't a gaming site per se, some of us may not have as much hands-on experience with game content, but it is not a big deal, we hardcore compensate with our strengths in conceptualizing and business strategy and numbers. If you need thorough accuracy in game content information there are other places for that.

Of course if game content is your strength, then do share with everyone, but if jumpin or whoever doesn't play all that much, it doesn't make him or her less valuable to this specific forum. Only, let each person speak on what they know, and if they don't, let them ask. If they're to be corrected, by all means. But let's not tell people who should speak and who shouldn't based on their level of gaming skill and exposure.

Part of UE3's advantage was that it was the only engine really capable of taking advantage of "the cutting edge" hardware in the beginning and that enabled them to dominate in the engine licensing market while the other engines were still trying to catch up.

It's pretty much their business to make cutting edge easier to program for. They need a market where the cutting edge is wanted. They didn't push MS to   512mb for their own good. They did it in their own interest.

Some of their recent comments regarding next gen consoles give the impression that they have seen the next gen hardware targets and are trying to pressure the console makers for more. Their hyperbolic statement about Apple "beating" them if they don't go cutting edge and Apple using a similar model of bleeding edge hardware similar to MS and Sony, which is totally untrue, the Samaritan processing requirement analysis , another recent accasion where they said they were  trying to show console makers a game could be made on par with Samaritan in an affordable manner, just solidifies that impression.

They said at GDC that "if devs were making a game for next-gen systems that you'd also want running on current systems, you would still go with UE3 and try for Samaritan-level sizzle in the next-gen versions of the game. But if you were going purely next-gen, you'd go with UE4."

They WANT Sony and MS to have hardware that requires UE4 for high end development. It's in their interest that their new engine is adopted next gen as much as possible after all.

Why is it Crytek seem to have a more conservative expectation of next gen in their CryEngine 3 GDC 2012 demo while Epic are pushing for something like Samaritan and beyond?

Cutting edge would benefit Epic and give them an advantage over their engine-licensing competitors. The reason they are pushing Sony and MS so much is for their sake. They want to maintain their dominance.

This.

In a world where Apple dominates the gaming, I'm gonna quit gaming altogether.

Yup that is why their biggest regret about this generation was not having an engine to take advantage of the bleeding edge tech is their biggest regret, wait that makes no sense. In the early years they were going toe to toe with id Tech, and there were other engines out there as or more advanced as theirs. Like I said support was their biggest advantage and now it is familiarity almost every dev is familliar with their current tool set. 

They didn't really gain anything from bumping the 360 up to 512MB business wise developrs would have still licenced their tech, the only difference would be that games on the 360 would look worse than  PS3 without exeption and Epic probably would have moved their showpeice games to the PS3. Tech could stay the same as it is now in the console space nd Epic would be doing fine in terms of licensing. But certain people belive that doing so would hurt the industry as a whole. 

Crytech were not showing a next gen console engine, they were showing "next gen DX11" on PC and a sizzle reel of Cryengine 3 games and projects, and new features. If Crytech wanted to make a next gen showpeice like the Samaritan demo they could.

Like I have said UE4 will be tailored to next gen hardware so even if the hardware isn't a massive leap it will be the goto version of Unreal for next gen.

Clearly you have some kind of vendetta against unreal, probably because they dissagree with your predictions and wants for next gen. 

Yah...clearly I have a vendetta...

I think I'm done here.