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UT 2K7 Slated for PS3 Launch
Gamespot is reporting that the next iteration in the Unreal Tournament series, UT 2007, has been announced as a PlayStation 3 launch title. From the article: "The game on display appeared to be Unreal Tournament 2007, the flashy-looking, Unreal Engine 3-based successor to the popular PC shooter Unreal Tournament 2004. However, neither Sony nor Epic would confirm when--or even if--UT 2007 would arrive on the PS3. Seven months later, the two companies have broken their silence. The January 2006 issue of PlayStation Magazine proudly proclaims that, yes, UT 2007 is coming to the PlayStation 3. Inside, the magazine also reveals that the game will be a launch title for the PlayStation 3, which is tentatively slated for a spring 2006 launch."
Not bad, consitering that the PS3 will support mouse and keyboard. Then again, they say that it will support linux too. Whoa, deja vu...
Personally, the UT games have grown stale as far as gameplay... however, there is no denying the graphical prowess of UT2k7. I have seen the engine demos in person twice and both times I was left in awe of what I was seeing. To imagine a console pumping out those graphics at a silky smooth frame-rate is pretty amazing, now if only some more substance and gameplay would get mixed in... I just might actually play an FPS on a console.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
No game in this series has really changed since the 2nd UT.
You are in the future and shoot people with lasers and mini-nukes. The console sales have previously been horrible - I doubt this one will fare much better.
Right now we are looking at least four confirmed PS3 launch titles:
Lair
Warhawk
UT 2007
Medal of Honor: Airbone
And Sony will surely be announcing more in the next month or two for the March launch.
Microsoft and the 360 have pretty much flunked out of the console race and really aren't relevant any more unless you are part of the niche hardcore Xbox and Dreamcast demo(probably around two to five million console owners).
Nintendo and the Rev look like they have a good chance of being cheap and fun enough to have a huge number of PS3 owners adding a Rev in addition.
We are looking at a two horse console race this next console cycle.
PS3: 120 million
Nintendo: 25-40 million
Microsoft: 8-12 million
Virtually every PS1/PS2 owner will be buying PS3 + natural market growth + a decent chunk of former Xbox owners
Nintendo looks to be the default 'second console' for the PS3 demo + natural market growth + a potentially very large influx of new people to the market
Microsoft is pretty much trying to salvage as much of their core Xbox as possible. They have lost the pc gamer crowd which was a fairly large segment of their user-base. And they have lost most of the 'teh most powerful console' demo to the PS3. Leaving pretty much the Sony hating/Halo/Dreamcast demo left.
The fact that a pc developer was able to get their engine up and running on the PS3 in about a month supports what most developers have been saying about the PS3 being the easiest to develop for. I am hearing that Sony is really going to have a huge amount of stuff to show at CES and the Sony show a month later leading up to the March launch. Unless a planet killing comet hits or something of that scale, we are looking at the most dominant console launch ever.
Who are these people who call themselves nerds and don't know that a 2K7 resistor is 2700 ohms, not 2007. Sheesh.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I know they've been cranking out a lot of Unreal Tournament sequels lately, but I didn't know they already had 2006 of them.
Unreal 2k3, 2k4, and GOTY have been staples at our LAN parties for ages. No, they don't offer quite the level of strategic depth of other FPS titles like Halo PC, Battlefield 2, or Call of Duty, but the UT series does offer a ton of benefits. Backward compatibility is a big one. UT will run like butter on damn near any crappy video setup, including GeForce FX and even some embedded cards. Also, platform compatibly is a big issue for our LAN parties. UT is one of the few games that has our Mac, Linux, and Windows users happily playing together with minimal fuss. The shear variety of gameplay offered is another staggering benefit. The number of vanilla install maps and gametypes is phenomenal. If 2k7 continues in these traditions, it will happily find a place in our future LANs as well.
My only fear with 2k7 being a PS3 launch is that the PC version will suffer for it. I don't mean graphically because I'm sure the new engine will look fantastic on every platform. I'm more worried about the problems that COD2 suffered from being a 360 title including many simplifications of gameplay to make it more accessible to a console audience. The grenade indicator and ridiculous recharging health system come to mind.
only one everything
Let's hope this isn't known as the FPS/Sports generation.
120 Million?
Where'd you get that number from?
The Playstation 2 has shipped approximately 100 Million units with a large portion of those that were sold being purchaced as:
1)Replacements
2)Cheap Dvd Players
3)Systems to play pirated games on
The fact is that Sony will (hopefully) improve quality control, Blu-Ray will probably not catch on at the rate DVD did, and Sony will do anything in their power to prevent piracy; this means that, regardless of the quality of the system, the PS3 will probably drop in sales.
Now, using Nintendo's statistics on console sales, the number of households that own consoles hasn't increased all that dramatically since the NES days; the market has grown simply because people have bought 2 or 3 systems rather than one. There is no reason to expect that this pattern would stop, so you can assume that there will not be a dramatic increase in the number of single console owners but that people will be far more likely to own 2 or all 3 systems.
(Score:-1, Rabid Fanboy)
"The PS3 and 360 will be indistinguishable from each other."
This is correct for one simple reason: 99% of the top selling games will be made for each system. Developers, for the sake of time and $$$, will create to the lowest common denominator.
Xbox had the same problem - Even with far superior power (from being released 2 years later) very few games took full advantage of the hardware. They instead created for as much as the PS2 could handle and ported the graphics.
The dev boxes for PS3 are still very limited so it is still impossible to tell how the performance trophey will be awarded. In the end, it won't even matter because of this. The deciding factor will be online activity, which seems to be dominated by M$ right now.
I know the graphics are better in more recent versions but the gameplay is not as good IMHO. UT 99 is alive and well, and runs native on Linux too!
- Have a picture
Why so many acronyms? You're only saving one character by using 2K7 over 2007, and it's harder to read.
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...since you proudly proclaim your own systematic use/abuse (what's the difference?) of the mod and metamod system in your sig.
-Pip
-- I don't systematically moderate down people who describe their uses/abuses of the mod and metamod system in their sigs... but I am inclined to reply to their posts in an attempt to engage their logic for doing so. --
As for Sony doing no wrong in Japan. That's a load of bullshit. The only reason Sony is doing so well is that when the PSX came out they had an easy to develop for system (way easier than dealing with the Saturn's dual processors) and cheaper licensing fees. This got a lot of developers to look into the system and it got both Squaresoft and Enix to sign into the Sony camp. Having both the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series on the PSX helped rope in many Japanese consumers. It doesn't hurt that Atlus with the Shin Megami Tensei series also signed on considering. This left the 3 most popular series of RPGs on one system which consumers just ate up.
The move to the PS2 was different, Sony already had mindshare and alliances with developers. They made sure to keep these alliance going strong to keep the francishes in the Sony camp. You can be sure that Sony will try everything in their power to keep the alliances going strong with the PS3 to keep the popular 3rd party games exclusive to the them. It will take a major change in the market to move the developers away from Sony. Nintendo previously had the developer support but the limitations and cost of the N64's cartiage format push the developers to Sony and their cheap media and lower licensing fees. And we all know what is most important. "Developers, Developers, Developers".