UT Shelved for Several Years

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
Engine guru Tim Sweeney confirms Epic's plans to sideline the UT series for "several years" in an interview with G4. Insteadl, Epic will be focusing on the Gears of War franchise as well as a number of unannounced titles.

“Unreal Tournament is certainly a major long-term priority but we’re planning not to release a major retail game in the series for several years. So we have that effort somewhat on hold while we work on a few other initiatives. “

For anyone who plays Unreal Tournament, the community is what has truly defined the game ever since Epic released their first moddable game in 1998. Sweeney even jokes that Unreal Tournament IV and V could be primarily made by the Unreal Tournament Community.
Source: UT Shelved for Several Years

Yes, the fans could make Unreal Tournament IV, but how would Epic advertise its Unreal Engine to developers? -_-

I've been a fan of Epic since the days of Jazz Jackrabbit and I can't help but feel a tad betrayed by Sweeney and co. when I read this news. Epic started as a PC game company and gained fame as a PC company. UT2004 was and still is one of my favorite first-person shooters. It was only when Epic decided to straddle the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 platforms that the Unreal Tournament series suffered to the point where company leaders to shelf the franchise "for several years." And some fans (myself included) feel that Unreal Tournament 3 was less of a consumer-oriented product and more of a technology demo intended to impress potential licensees for the Unreal Engine.

I'll still play UT3 for three reasons:
  1. It cost money.
  2. Other ToJ members play it.
  3. It's still fun (though not as fun as UT2004, IMHO).
But I don't own a Xbox 360 and the three-color palette (brown, gray, and dark brown) and 'roid rage character design of both Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 is not for me.

It seems every major first-person shooter developer falls out of favor eventually. id Software used to be king of the hill; those days are long over. Valve is pushing fans' patience with the rapid release of Left 4 Dead 2 and a blatant (and uncharacteristic) failure to deliver content promised for Left 4 Dead in interviews with company higher-ups several months ago.

Now Epic is shelving the Unreal Tournament series for the higher-grossing Gears of War. It makes sense from a business perspective, but I can't help but think that it wouldn't have come to this if Epic had just done the job right the first time around with UT3. The Black edition release of the game was a nice effort, but, based on what little I've seen of the UT3 community, it was too little, too late (which is a shame, because I was really hoping for at least a few "must-have" mods for UT3).
 
I agree with some of your sentiments, but I have a little bit different take on it. The UT series is my favorite game series of all times, my favorite being UT, then UT3, and lastly UT2k4 (though it had more polish in many areas than UT3). However, shelving it for several years isn't a bad idea. Why create another UT based on the Unreal Engine 3? I think it is a good idea to wait at least until Unreal Engine 4, and if they waited a bit longer so that the new engine was more mature before branching off for UT, even better! UT was one of the first UE3 games on the PC platform and it did suffer from being released to early. UT3 ended up doing OK but not stellar in sales. UT games have historically been long-lived even with low player counts to start out with. Right now arena shooters are not all that popular, and with the realism and class based stuff taking center stage, I think it would be poor timing for another UT. I have a hunch players might begin returning to UT3 as the mods become more mature, and as player eventually tire of the CoD, L4D, and TF2. I don't expect the player counts on those to drop by much, but some people will eventually want to return to the fast-paced arena shooter type of game play, and UT3 stands alone.

Another interesting thing to note is that they pretty specifically say they were shelving Unreal Tournament (leaving the possibility of another Unreal SP game) retail (which leaves open the possibility of UT based digital distribution games or further extensions to UT3.

Also, they do mention opening up the engine more to modders in UT3, which excites me greatly! I'm not sure if this means releasing the native code, or further patches to add modding features, but either way, I can't wait to get my hands on it!

Edit: Epic has several unannounced projects, one of which we all know has to be Gears of War 3, but they have never said that none of these projects will be for PC. People complained so much about Epic abandoning the PC, that they'd never fix UT3. Voila, the 2.0 patch with tons of extra content, bug fixes, steam integration, better marketing (how many free weekends for non-Valve games have you ever seen?)! So I'm definitely not giving up hope that they will continue to provide PC gamers with a good experience.

Another edit: As far as "must have" mods, and my statement about more mature mods, remember that phase 4 of the MSUC is still to come and I know of a lot of people developing for it. I'm one of them! :p Hopefully our release of Jailbreak will be well received.
 
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Both of you have Valid points, I personally believe one of the reasons for failure in UT 3 ,besides lack of promised content which was a big one, was the Overdone Beauty of the game, most people could not run the Demo smoothly if at all and the requirements were heavy hitting, so not many were ready to shell out a grand for upgrades for 1 game[maybe less] but you guys get the Idea. I bought Gears of War, I had seen it at my Bro's on console and thought it was cool, but it lacks something to be a huge hit, maybe the next pc version will be better.
I think it might be a good thing to put UT on the shelf for a few years, one big reason is to let the gamers cool down about the let down experienced and it will also give Epic some time to work on a Concrete Future Engine [UT 4] and a Super solid game for a Awesome comeback [Hopefully] :p
 
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my old clan leader Bklyn_Pete a while ago on TeamSpeak when we were both excitedly discussing the recently-announced UT3. He predicted it would be a failure, precisely for the graphical reasons Blackbeard stated.

I remember him saying, in his characteristic accent, "There were two reasons the original UT was so great. First was that ANYBODY with a computer could play it. You could buy someone a copy without worrying about what kind of computer they had: a computer was a computer, and it would install and run on ANYTHING. All my friends played it-- they borrowed my copy and got hooked, and ran out and bought their own. Second, anybody could score a kill. You'd still lose to people who had more skill, or who had played the game more than you, but any newbie could load up a five-pack of rockets and score a kill, which let everybody feel like they could accomplish SOMETHING even against more experienced players."

I agree with his sentiments wholeheartedly. They need to make a new UT with low graphical requirements and the ability for anyone to score a kill. That may seem counter-intuitive since I'm always rambling on enthusiastically about UT's skill curve and endless challenge, but there needs to be enough random elements in the game that everybody can get lucky, once or twice per game. That's one of the things that always separated UT from the more "sterile" feeling Quake 3, where 1v1 matches often ended in shutouts for the lesser side. UT2k4 followed this route, and though it was the one I played the most, for the game to succeed I think it needs to be shaken up a little.
 
That's one of the things that always separated UT from the more "sterile" feeling Quake 3, where 1v1 matches often ended in shutouts for the lesser side. UT2k4 followed this route, and though it was the one I played the most, for the game to succeed I think it needs to be shaken up a little.

Yeah, ut2k4 learning curve is astronomical. A new player jumping into a server will go 0-40 or something like that. At least UT3 you are able to score a few spammy kills even as a newbie because people can't go floating away from you and dodge everything.
 
The main reason I prefer Quake Live or UT2004 over UT3 is that the projectiles I shoot go where I expect them to go. In UT3, I'm always having to shoot higher or lower (I forget which) than I would in any other shooter to score a kill with the rocket launcher or flak cannon.

I can switch from playing Quake Live to UT2004 to Team Fortress without having to re-adjust my aim. When I play UT3, I feel like I'm fighting the controls.

The other reason I prefer UT2004 over UT3 is that the UT2004 maps actually display colors other than brown and gray. If I want to play Gears of War, I would have bought Gears of War. I want a fast-paced arena shooter with clean graphics, creative weapons, and awesome maps. UT2004 delivered exactly that; UT3 fell short.

Still, I've been a fan of Epic since the days of ZZT, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Epic Pinball. I'm not going to let one mediocre release turn me away from an otherwise great development studio.
 
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