This morning, Activision has overtaken EA as the worlds largest game publisher!

The reign of terror is coming to an end.

Tags: games

Last week i posted about Gears of war coming to the mac, and I wondered what was going on behind the scenes between epic and microsoft.

Well it turns out theres not a lot going on between those two.

However, Silicon Knights have a big bone to pick with Epic, apparently. SK have licensed UE3 (Unreal Engine 3) for their much-delayed and sometimes ridiculed game, Too Human. Now it turns out that they're blaming all the delays on Epic, and not without some grounds it seems.

SK have basically accused Epic of taking the licencees' money and pouring it into Gears of War instead of engine development, failing to provide support or deliver builds of UE3 as agreed. They cite examples of several other UE3 games in the works by other developers which have also been heavily delayed.

Its interesting to say the least. Just a month ago I was reading an interview with Cliffy B about middleware and UE3, and he said that he believed that epic's philosophy of having employees fulfill the dual role of engine support and game development was the only way they'd succeeded. However, its now that very philosophy that SK is attacking, claiming that epic was unable or unwilling to provide support for the engine due to commitments to developing Gears.

Hmmm…

Microsoft have refused to comment, stating that the argument does not involve them. Meanwhile, Microsofts "games for windows – Live" platform, which gears will use for online play, could come under threat. Valve has announced an upgrade for steam, called steam community, which will essentially be a free equivalent for steam games and possibly even some non-steam games.

interesting….

Tags: games

Ok everyone knows Gears is coming to PC. thats old news. But now we hear that its coming to the mac aswell? "Preposterous!" You say. The mac doesn't even support Direct3D! As a matter of fact….

No. It Doesn't.

And Epic have said that it will not use emulation. And that can only mean one thing.

Epic, one of the worlds most powerful games developers, are supporting OpenGL

This means that theres a chance Gears could make it to linux! Now i'm not a huge fan of linux or anything, but probably the main reason i'm not is the lack of decent games on linux. If AAA titles like Gears start coming out for linux, that might change!

It wouldn't really be a departure for epic – they've always released all the UT games with linux versions. However, it would seem to fly in the face of their relationship with Microsoft, as the Mac decision seems to.

One can only wonder whats going on behind the scenes…

Tags: games