News
Epic's Capps likens Wii's popularity to a 'virus'
Michael French Apr 20 2008, 8:00pm
Comments (7)
And he rules out the chances of Wii version of Unreal Engine, saying 'we go forward, not back'
President of Epic Games, Dr Mike Capps, has described the popularity of the Wii as a 'virus' in a recent interview with IGN and bemoaned the lack of games for the machine, although he acknowledges that it has helped widen the gaming audience.
He said: "First of all, great credit to [Nintendo]. The first time I played a videogame with my parents – aging myself a bit – was on Atari 2600. The next time I played a videogame with my parents, 25 years later or whatever, was Wii Tennis. So it's about bringing people together, families, Thanksgiving, all that. I think it's kind of like a weird virus because I have not yet found a reason to play with my Wii since then."
He later added: "It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on.
Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. Obviously there's a class of people who really love it and enjoy it and are getting into the games but I'm still waiting for that one game that makes me play it. Who knows, maybe Wii Fit will be it."
Capps also reiterated Epic's stance that its Unreal Engine won't be officially getting a Nintendo console iterating anytime soon.
He commented: "No, we go forward, not back. It makes more sense for us to invest in the next-generation tech. There have been shops that have done it. Red Steel was a launch title and that was on Unreal Engine. So it's been done. How you take an engine that's all based on shaders and materials and run it on hardware that doesn't support shaders is just impossible. It's about as easy as PSP for us. Maybe it would make sense, but it makes more sense to invest going forward."
Read the full interview here.
Comments
“Sounds sensational, but...”
Posted by: Simon Hawthorne - Apr 20, 11:21pm
...he's probably right. Mario Kari Wii was the first game I'd played on mine in over six months. But that suits the casual nature of the console, I guess.
“He would say that....”
Posted by: CT - Apr 21, 6:47pm
"Capps also reiterated Epic's stance that its Unreal Engine won't be officially getting a Nintendo console iterating anytime soon."
What he means is that gve Unreal is a bloated beached whale of an Engine it would have to go an the middleware equivalent of the Atkins diet before it could squeeze onto the Wii.
He's only dissing the Wii because Eipc can't rather than don't want to get a share of the action
“Quite”
Posted by: Dave B - Apr 22, 10:13am
I'm with CT. Unreal is the past, not the Wii. The Wii has carved out a new market for gaming, and brought it back as a family activity.
The Unreal engine is just an ungainly byproduct of a decent game - but the fact it's from a decent game doesn't make it a decent engine. And CT is quite right - Unreal would no more fit on the Wii than a fat man could squeeze through the eye of a needle. Capps is simply saying he doesn't want what he can't have. What next? 'I don't want to go out with Angelina Jolie!" says Capps?
“Re: Quite”
Posted by: jamba - Apr 23, 12:10am
But with over 150 studios using UE3 (and each of them paying that rumoured six-figure, mid-million licence fee!), there must be something the engine does right...
“Re: Jamba”
Posted by: Jumba - Apr 23, 1:26pm
Oh No! not another 148 rubbish unreal FPS games and perhaps 2 good unreal FPS to look forward to.
Damn. I'm glad I've got my Wii to break up the dire next generation FPS monotony.
“Re: Jamba”
Posted by: CT - Apr 23, 6:20pm
Jamba
it's a great engine for making a copy of the original, or to be fair a standard FPS. It's an absolute nightmare for anything else. I spent days - weeks - trying to rip the damn source code apart and rebuilding it to get it to do what I wanted, not just clone Unreal.
150 sales isn't a vote of confidence, it's just studios following the herd - at least that way if their game tanks they can all squeal 'well we were using the Unreal engine....'
“Vin”
Posted by: Dave B - Apr 24, 12:01pm
Is it just me or does Capps look a bit like Vin Diesel?