Epic thinks releasing on "every platform that's appropriate" is the way to go next generation, company co-founder Tim Sweeney told audiences at Develop this week. Moreover, the company will no longer work exclusively on massive Gears-style games, but will diversify its operations to reflect an increasingly fragmented hardware marketplace. "Last generation, most of the company was focused on building Gears of War 3, a massive project," Sweeney commented in a presentation attended by Eurogamer. "Gears of War 1 was a 60-person project at peak. Gears of War 3 was more than 100-people at peak.
"Now we're building several games at different scales," he continued. "We're building Fortnite, a PC online game which is a fun, sort of Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead. It's a 35-person team. It's not aiming to beat Call of Duty in terms of graphics. It's more of a Pixar art style and a limited project in scope, just aimed at fun as opposed to massive breakthroughs in scale.
"We're building a bigger, triple-A shooter project that hasn't been announced yet. And we've also internally started developing really tiny projects with two or three guys working together as a team for a few months in small scale game development.
"It's really cool. We're testing our development at all scales and learning it as we go. We're trying to master development at every scale."
The unannounced shooter could be the competitive online action game hinted at by job listings uncovered last week, which may or may not blend elements of the RTS, RPG and MMO genres. Epic's rumoured to be working on a Gears of War Kinect RTS, in case you'd forgotten.
Microsoft's Phil Spencer told OXM that Gears of War would take its sweet time showing up on Xbox One at E3 last month. "I think there's an opportunity to spend some time on Gears and on what it means," he said. "It's a rare franchise that managed to ship four times on the platform - 1, 2, 3 and then Judgment."
It's not clear how the future of Gears might chime with Epic's interest in releasing across several platforms - unlike the Halo license, the IP is wholly owned by its developer, but Epic has said there are "good, compelling reasons" for it to remain Xbox-only. The tenor of Spencer's comments suggests that Microsoft has secured the franchise as an exclusive for the moment.
"Increasingly we can think about building one game and shipping it on every platform that's appropriate," Sweeney said. "We're now thinking about building all of our games, looking first at PC as a platform, then porting and supporting console platforms with the same game, eventually porting it down to tablets where the control scheme is appropriate, and also porting and running it on the web."
Devoting more resources to PC is especially important, if Epic is to tap into new markets. "We can potentially reach a much larger audience, and it will be increasingly important worldwide. Consoles are specific to the Western markets: North America and Europe. They don't exist in Korea and China, which represent half of the gaming market. Those are PC online games.
"But, I think we can build one game that appeals to all those markets by supporting all platforms that are popular."
Source: OXM[SUP][1][/SUP]
[h=3]References[/h]
Thanks to: Rheena.com
"Now we're building several games at different scales," he continued. "We're building Fortnite, a PC online game which is a fun, sort of Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead. It's a 35-person team. It's not aiming to beat Call of Duty in terms of graphics. It's more of a Pixar art style and a limited project in scope, just aimed at fun as opposed to massive breakthroughs in scale.
"We're building a bigger, triple-A shooter project that hasn't been announced yet. And we've also internally started developing really tiny projects with two or three guys working together as a team for a few months in small scale game development.
"It's really cool. We're testing our development at all scales and learning it as we go. We're trying to master development at every scale."
The unannounced shooter could be the competitive online action game hinted at by job listings uncovered last week, which may or may not blend elements of the RTS, RPG and MMO genres. Epic's rumoured to be working on a Gears of War Kinect RTS, in case you'd forgotten.
Microsoft's Phil Spencer told OXM that Gears of War would take its sweet time showing up on Xbox One at E3 last month. "I think there's an opportunity to spend some time on Gears and on what it means," he said. "It's a rare franchise that managed to ship four times on the platform - 1, 2, 3 and then Judgment."
It's not clear how the future of Gears might chime with Epic's interest in releasing across several platforms - unlike the Halo license, the IP is wholly owned by its developer, but Epic has said there are "good, compelling reasons" for it to remain Xbox-only. The tenor of Spencer's comments suggests that Microsoft has secured the franchise as an exclusive for the moment.
"Increasingly we can think about building one game and shipping it on every platform that's appropriate," Sweeney said. "We're now thinking about building all of our games, looking first at PC as a platform, then porting and supporting console platforms with the same game, eventually porting it down to tablets where the control scheme is appropriate, and also porting and running it on the web."
Devoting more resources to PC is especially important, if Epic is to tap into new markets. "We can potentially reach a much larger audience, and it will be increasingly important worldwide. Consoles are specific to the Western markets: North America and Europe. They don't exist in Korea and China, which represent half of the gaming market. Those are PC online games.
"But, I think we can build one game that appeals to all those markets by supporting all platforms that are popular."
Source: OXM[SUP][1][/SUP]
[h=3]References[/h]
- [SUP]^[/SUP] Source: OXM (www.oxm.co.uk)
Thanks to: Rheena.com