Epic to Release Unreal Engine 3 to Mobile Platforms

In a news post I made yesterday, I touched on the fact that mobile devices are becoming more popular by the day, and if you look back to just a few years ago, you’ll see that the landscape has changed dramatically. Today, mobile devices are being used for a lot more than just talking or texting to someone. Just take a look at the sheer number of apps available for various platforms… it’s amazing.

The most popular alternate use for a mobile device, at least where sales are concerned, is gaming. I admit that I abhor gaming on a device that’s not 100% designed around it, and that includes the iPhone, but I’m so far in the minority, that I’d be harder to pick out than a “Where’s Waldo?”. Gaming on mobile devices, like the mobile lifestyle in general, is more popular than ever, and it’s going nowhere anytime soon.

It’s not just the hardware vendors who are working to increase capabilities on these devices, but developers as well. Let’s face it… 3D shooters don’t always work so well on a mobile device, and they certainly aren’t the easiest on the eyes. But, Epic Games is looking to change that by porting the Unreal Engine 3 to mobile platforms. No joke. It seems ridiculous, but it’s working, and it looks amazing (that’s a direct screenshot below).

Anand Shimpi met up with Epic Games VP Mark Rein last week, and he was given a hands-on demonstration of where things currently stand. The demo is just that, a demo, with no real depth, but rather acts a tech showcase. There’s a small 15s video that shows just how smooth the gameplay is, though, and I have to say, it’s impressive. This is all done on an iPhone 3GS, which goes to show just how powerful that device’s hardware is. Unfortunately, due to the fact that UE3 mobile requires OpenGL ES 2.0, any iPhone older than the 3GS is incompatible.

I only have one thing to say about all this… “Incredible”. To think that we’re still early in this mobile gaming thing… just imagine where things will stand 3 – 5 years from now. I admit, though, that as much as I respect mobile devices, I’d love to see the same kind of engine ported over to an actual portable game console, such as the next PSP or Nintendo DS. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if we did see something like this on the very next major launches.

Mark said they planned to make this available to licensees at some point in the near future. That’s great for end users because it means that any Unreal Engine licensee can now start playing around with making iPhone games based on the same technology. Unfortunately the recently announced, free to the public, Unreal Development Kit (UDK) is Windows only – the iPhone version isn’t included. I’d guess that at some point Epic will change that, it just makes too much sense. Doing so would enable a whole new class of iPhone game development using an extremely polished engine.