Unreal Engine Criticisms "Out of Context"

Aug 21, 2007

Dark Sector developer Digital Extremes claims that supposed criticisms of Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 were actually taken out of context.

Australian websiteGameplayer ran an interview Monday with Dark Sector director Steve Sinclair, who reportedly told the publication, "A lot of promises were made about the Unreal 3 engine, particularly on PS3. But as we see now, the time frames haven't been met and now a lot of games using it are being held up."

Digital Extremes now says that the comments were misrepresented and "taken out of the context of the full interview."

In a statement from Digital Extremes CEO James Schmalz (forwarded to Next Gen by Epic Games VP Mark Rein), he said, "As long time partners of Epic Games, we have nothing but respect for what they've done with their engine and the huge success of Gears of War. We have many friends at Epic and still have a great relationship with them. The truth of the matter is that Unreal Engine 3 didn't exist when we started developing Dark Sector. We had some great ideas for the next-gen consoles coming out and these ideas quickly turned into a whole development environment that revolves around the Evolution Engine now powering Dark Sector."

The Gameplayer article claimed that Digital Extremes chose its own custom-built engine over Epic's offering because of alleged development issues with UE3.

Schmalz added, "Ultimately, it was the right decision for us to branch out with our own technology but we know that the Unreal Engine is a great engine and expect it will continue to power many great games in the future."