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Forums - Nintendo - Epic: Our games don't appeal to the Wii's crowd.

Viper1 on 17 August 2008
LordTheNightKnight said:

 

Depends on if the engine is designed to be scaled or not. Evidently, the CoD 4 engine is. UE3 may not be, but that developer will prove whether or not it is.

COD4 isn't all that scalable or they would have put it on PS2 as well.

 

Onyxmeth said:

Can you provide links for this? All I can find is the original article from Nov 2007 where Mark Rein says in an interview that an unnamed licensee is bringing the Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. I can't find anything on Google past that. What's the company's name, and what is their game?

Also I do not know the difference between the COD4 engine and the UE3 engine. I do know Mark Rein said this in regards to the licensee, "It's their own port, in the same way Ubisoft brought Unreal Engine 2 to the Wii [for Red Steel]," he said, noting prior to that response, "I just don't see a big market there to bring this big hulking memory intensive engine over to a much smaller system."

If this were going to be an easy port and/or Epic thought the Wii could handle the engine well, I think they would have just done it themselves. I'm sure some of the aspects of the engine can make it to the Wii, but I don't think the Wii can handle the whole thing at once. But yes, this is coming from someone with no real technical knowledge on the matter, so I could be wrong. Can you back up that this can be done with technical terms?

 

Sorry, can't name the developer or the game.  My real name is known via this username and the dev would be pretty pissed with me if I dropped info without their permission.

Ubisoft ported over UE2.5 very easily and plan to take Red Steel 2 up to a new level.  Don't foget that SE is now a licensed UE3 holder.  Speaking off which, SE ported their PS3 specific engine, Crystal Tools, to Wii also.  I can't say anything more than that for you.

Epic just doesn't care whether Wii could handle the entire engine or not.  That's rather obvious by what they say.   They're also very reactionary with their market space.  Instead of going first into a market segment, they wait until everyone else is already going in that direction and demanding many times over for their engine.   Nothing wrong with that approach because it's very safe financially but they've whittled down their market to an exact tiny slice in the corner and don't feel the desire to peak around the room unless they get asked to look around...metaphorically speaking.

 

Technically speaking the Wii's TEV is a 16 texture per pass piepeline that can handle all the modern texture effects....just formatted differently (as in not the way Epic [or most devs for that matter] is used to rendering them).  That means it can run 15 high end textures (plus the base texture map) in one single rendering pass.  Cut it down to 8 high end textures such as normal maps, bump maps, etc...and combine it with high end lighting effects like HDR, secular effects, bloom, etc...



The rEVOLution is not being televised

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naznatips on 17 August 2008

Why do people freak out everytime Epic says they don't like the Wii? Of course they don't like the Wii. Epic's entire business model is based on the fact that development on HD consoles is expensive and people will pay them to license their overpriced engine. The Wii is extremely easy to develop for, and they can't sell their engine there. No one would pay for it. The more the Wii sells, the more Epic's entire business model and company is threatened. If you expect them to like the Wii or make Wii games you are completely bonkers.



Onyxmeth on 17 August 2008
Viper1 said:
LordTheNightKnight said:

 

Depends on if the engine is designed to be scaled or not. Evidently, the CoD 4 engine is. UE3 may not be, but that developer will prove whether or not it is.

COD4 isn't all that scalable or they would have put it on PS2 as well.

 

Onyxmeth said:

Can you provide links for this? All I can find is the original article from Nov 2007 where Mark Rein says in an interview that an unnamed licensee is bringing the Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. I can't find anything on Google past that. What's the company's name, and what is their game?

Also I do not know the difference between the COD4 engine and the UE3 engine. I do know Mark Rein said this in regards to the licensee, "It's their own port, in the same way Ubisoft brought Unreal Engine 2 to the Wii [for Red Steel]," he said, noting prior to that response, "I just don't see a big market there to bring this big hulking memory intensive engine over to a much smaller system."

If this were going to be an easy port and/or Epic thought the Wii could handle the engine well, I think they would have just done it themselves. I'm sure some of the aspects of the engine can make it to the Wii, but I don't think the Wii can handle the whole thing at once. But yes, this is coming from someone with no real technical knowledge on the matter, so I could be wrong. Can you back up that this can be done with technical terms?

 

Sorry, can't name the developer or the game.  My real name is known via this username and the dev would be pretty pissed with me if I dropped info without their permission.

Ubisoft ported over UE2.5 very easily and plan to take Red Steel 2 up to a new level.  Don't foget that SE is now a licensed UE3 holder.  Speaking off which, SE ported their PS3 specific engine, Crystal Tools, to Wii also.  I can't say anything more than that for you.

Epic just doesn't care whether Wii could handle the entire engine or not.  That's rather obvious by what they say.   They're also very reactionary with their market space.  Instead of going first into a market segment, they wait until everyone else is already going in that direction and demanding many times over for their engine.   Nothing wrong with that approach because it's very safe financially but they've whittled down their market to an exact tiny slice in the corner and don't feel the desire to peak around the room unless they get asked to look around...metaphorically speaking.

 

Technically speaking the Wii's TEV is a 16 texture per pass piepeline that can handle all the modern texture effects....just formatted differently (as in not the way Epic [or most devs for that matter] is used to rendering them).  That means it can run 15 high end textures (plus the base texture map) in one single rendering pass.  Cut it down to 8 high end textures such as normal maps, bump maps, etc...and combine it with high end lighting effects like HDR, secular effects, bloom, etc...

If your counter is you having insider information that you can't share, then understand mine and possibly others' skepticism on the matter. From my perspective, there is 9 months of silence on this, so unless you can divulge info and back it up or this becomes public knowledge, i'll have to have my doubts this can be done. I'm not saying you're lying by any means, but I don't know you enough to trust your word. I don't think you know or trust me enough either understandably, but if you want you could PM it to me and I won't tell anyone whatever is in the PM.

I was going to say it previously and forgot to mention that I agree Epic may just be holding out to let someone else to do the work, since they would benefit regardless with future Wii licensees.

 



Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.



Jo21 on 17 August 2008
naznatips said:
Why do people freak out everytime Epic says they don't like the Wii? Of course they don't like the Wii. Epic's entire business model is based on the fact that development on HD consoles is expensive and people will pay them to license their overpriced engine. The Wii is extremely easy to develop for, and they can't sell their engine there. No one would pay for it. The more the Wii sells, the more Epic's entire business model and company is threatened. If you expect them to like the Wii or make Wii games you are completely bonkers.

 

unreal engine is a great engine, and works on relative old hardware.

but that nots entirely true, since unreal engine 2.5 should be able to run on the wii.



Viper1 on 17 August 2008
Onyxmeth said:

If your counter is you having insider information that you can't share, then understand mine and possibly others' skepticism on the matter. From my perspective, there is 9 months of silence on this, so unless you can divulge info and back it up or this becomes public knowledge, i'll have to have my doubts this can be done. I'm not saying you're lying by any means, but I don't know you enough to trust your word. I don't think you know or trust me enough either understandably, but if you want you could PM it to me and I won't tell anyone whatever is in the PM.

I was going to say it previously and forgot to mention that I agree Epic may just be holding out to let someone else to do the work, since they would benefit regardless with future Wii licensees.

 

And I don't blame your skepticism either. 

What I can state is that engines take years to develop, as do games, so a 9 month moment of silence is not really anything to look too deeply into.   We have games that go a year or more with little word on their progress so a game engine from a developer who has yet to come forward at all has little reason to say anything yet.

You make a good final point though only that developer will have access to the Wii UE3 engine because they can't sub-license the UE3 tech and if they were just using this developer as a sub contractor for UE3 Wii development, I think it would have been stated already instead of the rough words from Epic.   However, like I said earlier they are reactionary such that if this developer is successful with the Wii UE3 engine, you can bet the shirt on your back they'll be right there to get their own share of the pie.

 

 



The rEVOLution is not being televised

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Batman...WTF? on 17 August 2008

See here for reply http://www.ombwatch.org/budget/disappointed.jpg



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Tayne on 17 August 2008
naznatips said:
Why do people freak out everytime Epic says they don't like the Wii? Of course they don't like the Wii. Epic's entire business model is based on the fact that development on HD consoles is expensive and people will pay them to license their overpriced engine. The Wii is extremely easy to develop for, and they can't sell their engine there. No one would pay for it. The more the Wii sells, the more Epic's entire business model and company is threatened. If you expect them to like the Wii or make Wii games you are completely bonkers.

 

You would think comments like this would end this thread, but probably won't.  I've learned alot by reading it the last couple of days.




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Onyxmeth on 17 August 2008
Soriku said:
naznatips said:
Why do people freak out everytime Epic says they don't like the Wii? Of course they don't like the Wii. Epic's entire business model is based on the fact that development on HD consoles is expensive and people will pay them to license their overpriced engine. The Wii is extremely easy to develop for, and they can't sell their engine there. No one would pay for it. The more the Wii sells, the more Epic's entire business model and company is threatened. If you expect them to like the Wii or make Wii games you are completely bonkers.

 

OK...how about this. Why can't they make some uber engine for the Wii (ie. an engine that produces much better graphics/physics/whatever than anything seen on the Wii before) and license that out to devs who want to make high quality/AAA Wii titles? No doubt with the large growing userbase third parties WILL want to make high quality Wii titles and they could have Epic's engine in mind. It wouldn't cost as much as something like the UE3 BUT I believe it could be a success.

Unreal Engine 2 and 2.5 can be ported to the Wii. Why bother making a new engine? They make new engines to support better hardware. UE3 is popular because it makes HD game development a lot less expensive a venture. What would be the point of building an engine exclusively for the Wii when the entry to develop for it is already much lower? You basically want Epic to further the gap in development prices between the Wii and the 360/PC/PS3? That would in effect start killing off their more profitable UE3 engine as developers choose Wii development over HD development.

Nothing you have been saying is beneficial to Epic, only to Wii owners. So why do you question their methods so much?

 



Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.



Onyxmeth on 17 August 2008
Soriku said:
Onyxmeth said:
Soriku said:
naznatips said:
Why do people freak out everytime Epic says they don't like the Wii? Of course they don't like the Wii. Epic's entire business model is based on the fact that development on HD consoles is expensive and people will pay them to license their overpriced engine. The Wii is extremely easy to develop for, and they can't sell their engine there. No one would pay for it. The more the Wii sells, the more Epic's entire business model and company is threatened. If you expect them to like the Wii or make Wii games you are completely bonkers.

 

OK...how about this. Why can't they make some uber engine for the Wii (ie. an engine that produces much better graphics/physics/whatever than anything seen on the Wii before) and license that out to devs who want to make high quality/AAA Wii titles? No doubt with the large growing userbase third parties WILL want to make high quality Wii titles and they could have Epic's engine in mind. It wouldn't cost as much as something like the UE3 BUT I believe it could be a success.

Unreal Engine 2 and 2.5 can be ported to the Wii. Why bother making a new engine? They make new engines to support better hardware. UE3 is popular because it makes HD game development a lot less expensive a venture. What would be the point of building an engine exclusively for the Wii when the entry to develop for it is already much lower? You basically want Epic to further the gap in development prices between the Wii and the 360/PC/PS3? That would in effect start killing off their more profitable UE3 engine as developers choose Wii development over HD development.

Nothing you have been saying is beneficial to Epic, only to Wii owners. So why do you question their methods so much?

 

 

Oh...I didn't know UE3 made HD development easier. I see your point then.

Just to get you up to speed on why Unreal Engine 3 is so popular and why Epic will not struggle if they ignore the Wii:

There is no public pricing, but most leaks say it costs 1-1.5 million to license the engine and an extra 500,000 per each additional console with a 3% revenue cost on game sales. Everything you get from this engine could cost over 10 million to do on your own, which shows in the balooning budgets of games like Too Human and Final Fantasy XIII. Imagine cutting anywhere from 7-10 million dollars out of the budget of a game by using proven development tools that are probably better than anything the developer could cook up themselves anyways. Here's the list of games that are using the engine, and marvel at it and how much money they are making off of this venture in just three years(maybe a bit more) so far:

Unreal Engine 3

 



Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.



Onyxmeth on 17 August 2008
Soriku said:
Hmm...I see. I get your point.

Also, there's a game called Sephiroth 2? lol.

Now go back to the OP and read between the lines at what Mike Capps is really saying when he disses the Wii, or just read Naznatips thead ender explanation as it's dead on.

Regarding Sephiroth 2 that threw me a bit too when I saw it. It must be a PC game.

 



Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.