Today, at GamesFest, Epic Game’s Mike Capps discussed the development timeline of Unreal Engine 4 and the team’s focus on the next generation of consoles. It is a different swing than last generation, where the PC centric engine was adopted by console developers and made famous by games like Epic’s own Gears of War. Capps statement isn’t exactly surprising considering the domination of the modern console over the PC platform. What is different is the fact that the engine will continue taking forever to develop:
We’ve got Unreal [Engine] 4 in production right now… it’s going to be in the next console generation – our rough guess is 2012 [to] 2018.
We’ve known that Unreal 4 has been worked on for a considerably long time now, and it appears as if Epic wants to have a race with Duke Nukem Forever in the longest production ever. Something tells me that whenever this console generation starts winding down earlier than we all want, the years might get pushed down a bit. I wonder if more developers are just going to license engines in the future as opposed to developing their own? It seems to be the very brown trend.
[Via Gamasutra]
