Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Remember back when Mark Rein let loose somebody was working on Unreal Engine 3 for Wii? Well, we finally know what game will be using it, we guess. Kind of. We don't really know much about the exact game, per se. What game? The one that EA is publishing from Q Entertainment, Resident Evil co-creator Shinji Mikami and the man responsible for one of our most favorite Wii games, Suda51.

Suda says Unreal Engine 3 is a "powerful, easy-to-implement game engine" that is aiding his company to "quickly bring our vision to life." He also added that the "tools and technology" allow him to "create games faster, easier and with less risk." So are we excited? Well, maybe. It's not like the Wii version is mentioned and we would think it should be, considering no title up until now has utilized Unreal Engine 3 technology. But, hey, we'll try to be as optimistic as we can, because we feel confident in the abilities of all involved, to tell the truth.

Now if only we could some information on what this game is ...

Yup, Unreal Engine 3 is headed to the Wii, but Epic won't be handling it. No, instead the engine will be adapted for use on the Wii by an unnamed licensee. Mark Rein, who you all know full well, commented as such during a recent interview with Kikizo.

"It's their own port, in the same way Ubisoft brought Unreal Engine 2 to the Wii [for Red Steel]," he said. Of course, he couldn't help but toss in his own pessimistic view regarding the whole idea, adding "I just don't see a big market there to bring this big hulking memory intensive engine over to a much smaller system."

And now, we're left wondering what the engine is being adapted for. Anyone care to speculate?

[Via Joystiq]

Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey is of the mind that 2K's much-hyped game Bioshock could find itself on the PS3, Wii, PS2 and handhelds sometime in the future. Hickey says this won't happen for quite some time, though, stating that he believes the game could make its way onto these platforms sometime in 2009.

While we've seen Rockstar's own RAGE engine adapted to the Wii in the Nintendo console version of their Table Tennis game, we wonder if the Unreal Engine III that powers Bioshock could even be augmented for use on the Wii. We've heard Epic's Mark Rein state that he doubts the system can handle it on multiple occasions, so we wonder if 2K could even get it to work with the Wii.

He said as much last year (wow, seems like yesterday we were calling this thing the Revolution), but the hopes of seeing the Unreal Engine 3 on the Wii is still strong in the community. And this year at GDC, again the question came up and again Mark Rein took the time to take those hopes into a headlock and proceed to give them the Yoga noogie of a lifetime.

Mark said "this is kinda a high definition engine. Designed for a certain level of graphics card and certain amount of CPU. You know, I'm sure one of our licensees will squeeze it down into the Wii. The way Ubisoft squeezed Unreal Engine 2 into the PSP," he explained in a little bit more detail exactly why the Wii and Unreal Engine 3 won't become best buddies, "Unreal Engine 3 is designed for a high level shader architecture and the Wii doesn't have that. I mean, you know, it's just not what we've been aiming for, so it's not something we're looking to do or support." Mark didn't go on to talk about specific companies that were already looking to license the engine, if there even are any, but apparently its fairly cheap to license as Mark said he "only saw a splinter of the money from Splinter Cell."

Epic Games' Mark Rein, in a Q & A session attended by Joystiq Blogger Christopher Grant during the recent GDC, said that we probably "won't be seeing Unreal Engine 3 on the Revolution." Mark implied that the Unreal Engine 2 would be more than sufficient for anything the platform may demand and had yet to be informed on what the final specs for the console would be.

Mark's comments were more towards down-scaling HD projects, such as the upcoming Gears of War, for the console and cited that it would not be very cost effective. We assume that titles will eventually utilize the Unreal Engine 3 on the console, however upcoming titles created specifically with HD resolutions in mind are more than likely not going to see an incarnation on Nintendo's system. 

In a transformation that's likely to be reflective of many a narrow-minded gamer, Epic Games' VP, Mark Rein, has rapidly gone from gimmick-loathing skeptic to accepting and interested party with regards to Nintendo next-generation offering. In a recent CVG interview, Mr. Rein stated that not only was he looking forward to seeing the Revolution's technical specifications, but that his company had contacted Nintendo and expressed interest in the machine. Now, whether or not this could be considered as legitimate interest and not just a subtle marketing band-aid is up for debate.

We've heard plenty of rumors about Unreal Engine 3 running on the Revolution, rumors which now seem rather rickety when held up against this interview. After all, if Epic's graphical tour-de-force was really ready for the system, why would the engine developer still be awaiting information on the system's capabilities? I'm no technical genius, but I think it's fair to say that you'd have to know a machine's specifications before you could get your brand new graphics engine working on it. Or is that an unrealistic expectation? (Ack! A pun!)