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UT3 Won't Feature Cross Play Capability
Next Generation is reporting on comments from Epic's Mark Rein, who participated in an IRC chat with some members of the Unreal community recently. In the chat, Rein revealed that Unreal Tournament 3 will not feature the ability for PS3 and PC players to compete on the same servers. Said Rein, "We looked at how this would impact our ability to respond quickly to things happening at internet speed on the PC side of the equation and realized that this would not be in the best interests of our very loyal PC userbase because we would constantly be holding on to updates to wait until they passed cert on the console platform. Our PC fanbase is of ultimate importance to us. They are our bread and butter. We can't let them down or compromise their experience in any way to accommodate cross platform play."
That console owners wouldn't have much fun getting owned by people that are playing with kb/mouse - so it also makes sense.
:(
On the other hand,
The first time a group of fairly talented console players meet up with a group of fairly talented PC players in a first-person shooter, the limitations of a console controller versus the flexibility of a mouse are going to become painfully obvious.
When I played Halo on an Xbox (not a lengthy play session, admittedly), it felt like I was playing wearing mittens.
There's something to be said about having your mouse set almost fast enough for the cursor to register your pulse - because in an FPS, being able to do a quick 360 in midair in a fraction of a second is the difference between getting a kill and being a kill.
This could lead players to assume that the PC is the platform to be on, much to the detriment of console game sales and rentals.
I don't have a use for consoles - I dislike the limitations and the controllers have been horrendous since the days of the Atari 2600 and don't care much for the kind of games that consoles do better than PCs, so while I admit I might be short-changing the console side a little, that's my take.
Well, that and the fact that PC gamers would either utterly OWN console players, or they'd have to add in such an aggressive and compensatory aim-assist in the consoles that the PC players would refuse to play.
Of course, the tinfoil hatter in me speculates that the console MAKERS wouldn't have much incentive to support/encourage a product that would illustrate to their players how really crippled they are by the control systems....but that's just nuts, right?
No, no, I'm SURE it's just about them supporting their loyal fanbase and not wanting to wait for console-certification. Sure it is.
-Styopa
All the "well you wouldn't want them to compete anyways, because keyboard 0wnz controller" posters would do well to remember that keyboard/mouse support has already been confirmed for the PS3 version of UT3.
You're all absolutely correct about mouse versus joystick for aiming and turning.
The other point to consider is that the entire Unreal series has been heavily modded by the PC gaming community...I recall nude skins and even black skins (invisible in the dark, except for the sniper bullets that fly off you), Simpsons mods, Mario Brothers mods, The Matrix mods, Aliens mods, etc.
Imagine the Republican uproar in Congress (e.g. Lieberman, McCain, et tu Clinton?) or the Florida courts (Jack Thompson) about little Johnny seeing a nude girl jumping around and shooting him while playing on his console...I say screw that. Keep the kiddies with their consoles locked in the original games and make them pay for mods using the Microsoft pay-for-download model...who cares if those clowns don't get community-based mods? EPIC is going to give us the PC version we want, with no filters or limitations, the way they always have.
This is a good thing for the console gamers because it means they won't have to be victims of the various cheats and hacks that the PC gamers inevitably find and exploit.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I think the issue is that the console version will lag far behind the PC version, and like nearly any multiplayer FPS, and exact version match is required to play.
If people run servers supporting both PCs and consoles, then when an update comes out for the PC, they'll have to choose whether to upgrade and lose the console players till the console upgrades, or wait for the console upgrades, and lose the PC players who eventually update because all the other servers have.
Or, worse, you could get a situation where servers never install patches because they don't want to lose console players, and PC players don't install patches because they want to play on said servers.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.