EA Announces Multi-Title Unreal Engine 3 License

An anonymous reader writes to mention a Gamasutra article about a surprising announcement from EA. They've made the move to license the Unreal 3 Engine for a series of next-generation titles. "The brief announcement states that EA 'employs a variety of engines, tools and technologies to best serve the needs of each game and development team', but raises interesting issues regarding the Criterion-authored Renderware engine, purchased by EA in 2004 alongside the Burnout developer, and its intended global EA rollout."

Comments

Re:Game engine consolidation

[Pharmboy]

Valve has been doing something like this for some time, but differently. By keeping their SDK opened up (and developing TFC soley using the public SDK) they encouraged independent content. DoD was indy at one time, as were most of the titles that now run on the HL1 or Steam/Source engine. The good stuff, they buy up or invest further in, turning "ok free mods" into "really good $10/$20 games".

I own many of the titles, and the game play is very different. There is a little "sameness" in some titles (CS/TFC/HL) but this is mainly just consistancy, not generic blandness. The content is different as is the overall gameplay. Then again, HL1 itself was a licensed engine from Quake.

So you can develop some unique games on the same platform. EA will probably do it closed. Valve does it fairly open. The public will decide who does it better.