Sega licenses Unreal Engine 3

[Crossblades]

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Sega has announced today that they have entered a licensing agreement with Epic Games to use the Unreal Engine 3 for several projects that they are developing. The projects that will be using the engine will be announced later in the year.

"Sega is pleased to arm our developers with the sophisticated tools contained in Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3," said Simon Jeffery, President and COO, Sega of America, Inc. "Its versatility and power will help Sega create incredible gaming experiences."

"Epic is extremely excited to be working with Sega," said Mark Rein, Vice President, Epic Games, Inc. "Sega has a long history of innovation and leadership in our industry and we're honored that they've chosen to use Unreal Engine 3."

It'll be interesting to see the projects that make use of the engine. Updates will be made when available.

[The black mage]

so another company is using the unreal Engine.
looks like soon every game is going to be using the same Engine.

Still can't wait to see what saga make with it.

[Slothy]

I'm not surprised to see another major company licensing a powerful engine like this; hell, I pretty much started to call this a year or two ago. With development costs being what they are it only makes sense. I expect more Japanese companies in particular will start doing this for a number of reasons. Namely because American developers have in general gotten way ahead of most Japanese dvelopers in terms of the technological side of game development, and the typical strategy of building a different engine for every game just isn't as viable anymore.

[Renmiri]

SE licensed the Unreal engine iirc

[Shoeberto]

Namely because American developers have in general gotten way ahead of most Japanese dvelopers in terms of the technological side of game development, and the typical strategy of building a different engine for every game just isn't as viable anymore.
I don't know that the former is necessarily true, but the latter is definitely going to be a big thing with the new gen.

SE licensed the Unreal engine iirc
Yep.

[Slothy]

Namely because American developers have in general gotten way ahead of most Japanese dvelopers in terms of the technological side of game development, and the typical strategy of building a different engine for every game just isn't as viable anymore.
I don't know that the former is necessarily true, but the latter is definitely going to be a big thing with the new gen.

I recently heard about an interview involving one of the people who currently works at Mistwalker and has worked at Capcom and other developers and agrees about the state of the tech being used by the industry, and Japanese companies generally falling behind in recent years. I mean look at a lot of major developments in recent years: things like the Havok physics engine, Unreal Engine, the real time lighting and shadows pulled off by id software in Doom 3, the recent demos shown of the technology going into Star Wars: The Force Unleashed; it's all way ahead of almost anything that any Japanese developer has done on there own. There are still exceptions, such as Kojima and his team who still know how to build a great engine with some pretty unique features no one's ever thought of, but in general the engine technology put together by western companies blows the stuff you see developed in Japan out of the water. I think it's the tendency of Japanese developers to develop a different engine for every game that I mentioned before that is partially responsible for this. There's not necessarily anything wrong with the tech gap though; I still think a lot of the most fun and creative games come out of Japan, but the best tech is by far being made in the West.

[Renmiri]

That might change... Have you seen the Youtube with ray tracing done on PS3 ? Amazing

Ray tracing is only done nowadays by movie special effects people. Can't wait to see some PS3 exploits of it :D