The Co-op Episode 48: What Does No Unreal Engine 4 Mean For Wii U?

Gary at TheKoalition.com writes: This week our Editor-in-chief Richard Bailey and Jakejames Lugo (Venomous Fatman) joined us to speak in length about their time at Pax East last week. One of our main discussions came from GDC, where Epic unveiled their Unreal Engine 4. There was tons of controversy when they was asked if the engine would be coming to the Wii U and Epic downplayed the system by letting everybody know Unreal Engine 3 would still be available for Wii U.

With the Wii U unable to take on these new technologies, what does this mean for the future of the console?

Also on this podcast we discuss the Battlefield 4 and Metal Gear Solid V announcements. We also speak on some of the new releases we have been playing such as Bioshock: Infinite and Gears of War: Judgement.

Pax games discussed include:
Last of Us
Injustice
State of Decay
Guacamelee
Kingdom Hearts 1.5
Saints Row IV

And lots more.

[MrKennedy]

This is a good podcast about games.

[Ck1x]

It means that this post is late and Mark Rein is still very busy taking his head out of his own A$$...

[Munnkyman]

He really must have pissed some people off to backtrack the way he did

[Deku-Johnny]

"Wii U 'unable' to take on these new technologies", Wii U could handle tech such as Unreal Engine 4. Engine's can be customised to suit the needs of the platform they're being used on. It's not that it's unable to take it on, it's that Epic are unwilling to make their engine work on Wii U.

[AO1JMM]

Well said

[PopRocks359]

@Deku-Johnny

I really don't know what's more dumb; that I already knew this when the whole thing first started or that I had several people insulting me for stating it.

Glad I'm not the only one getting it now though. There's such a thing called jumping the gun and man did people do that here.

As AO1JMM said, well said.

[Donnieboi]

Epic is unwilling? Why? Or are u making excuses for the Wii U's capabilities (or lack-thereof)?

[Deku-Johnny]

I'm not making excuses for anyone, yes Nintendo will have the weakest console this gen but the Wii U is still pretty powerful. I'm assuming it's Epic that are unwilling just like 4A Games (the makers of Last Light) who made up excuses about the Wii U's GPU (that have been proven wrong by companies such as Criterion)so people didn't think they were being unwilling or too lazy to give the new console a chance.

I understand that it's a risk to support a new console, even supporting the PS4/720 holds a risk but the more people that take that risk the less of a risk it becomes. If company like Epic were to take the risk of allowing their engine on the Wii U more and more 3rd party companies would support it.

[Starfox-17]

Gearbox didn't have any trouble if that FPS rumour is true ????

[MasterCornholio]

Oh you mean the superior version of Aliens that the Wii U was supposed to get.

Strange that we haven't heard anything about the Wii U version in a while.

Motorola RAZR i

[Deku-Johnny]

@MasterCornholio, it's not exactly strange. Aliens was universally panned by consumers and critics alike, pretty much no one liked it not even Gearbox themselves. I doubt we'll ever see the Wii U version because they know anyone who wanted it for Wii U will have seen the outcome of the original release.

[WiiUsauce]

just been confirmed by Eidos Montreal that Wii U version of Deus Ex looks better than the PC version.
http://mynintendonews.com/2...
the Wii U is a pretty capable machine, and 3 years from now when devs get a better handle on the hardware, we'll be seeing some amazing and gorgeous exclusive content with awesome exclusive features like Miiverse.

[Jek_Porkins]

Well he said people could fit it for the Wii U, but URE3 looks pretty good.

[PopRocks359]

Watch what you say; you're apparently a delusional straw-grasping fanboy for speaking the truth, or so the usual bass-ackwards trolls have informed me.

[Starfox-17]

Engines like Retro studio's nextgen wiiu engine are what will impress,engines built for 1 particular console to take full advantage of every feature ect,multi plat engines like UE4 wont be needed as Retro studio's nextgen wiiu engine is for 3rd partys and 1st ???

[DivineAssault]

Nintendo has proprietary hardware that companies dont want to take to time to build it for.. But if sony used their own again, devs would.. Nintendo needs to build better relationships or they will stay in the same situation forever.. MS entered the game console market way after nintendo yet has way better support..

[lilbroRx]

The single difference here is money. Nintendo doesn't wipe the developers rectums with it to get games on their system the way Sony and MS do. That is all there is to it.

People seem to be ingoring the "other" third party support that Nintendo has been hitting home with on the Wii U. Indie devs. They've had nothing but praise for the Wii U and more and more jump on board everyday.

I don't too much care for bloated, monopolistic companies that only care about money margins and marketing like EA, Activision and Ubisoft.

Indie developers bring freshness and originality to gaming that hasn't since the 90's. They are the future of gaming and they will get my support on the Wii U.

[unworthyBOZO]

That's an interesting thing your saying because it seems like many indie developers are jumping onboard the playstation bandwagon, but the main issue here is epic not willing to throw Nintendo a lot of support and no matter how you spin that it sucks for Nintendo, because a lot of third parties are gonna use UE4 for there games. Obviously the Wii U is going to support UE4 after Mark Rein backtracked from his comments, but the way he laughed and scoffed when he was ask that question, clearly shows Nintendo is making the same mistakes they have been making for the past decade which is they are not reaching out to third parties and helping them out with putting software on there hardware. I don't care what Nintendo fans says third party software is extremely important thats why the PS2,PS3,360, and even Nintendo's own SNES were successful, I bet we are going to see games running on UE4 released for the Wii U in the near future but they are going to be halfassed ports of there PS4/720 counterparts.

[just-joe]

Rein said that the Wii U could run Unreal Engine 4, but Epic isn't making anything with or anything at all for the system.

[Qrphe]

UE4 not being supported on Wii U has nothing to do with its power (UE4 is flexible enough to be downscaled even to mobile platforms). The actual problem is that there is no financial interest by Epic into supporting the system.

[young7yang]

Who cares

the Wii was profitable and so will the Wii-U

after seeing the Zelda beta and playing the hell out of Ninja Gaiden sigma I know Nintendo will do well in the graphics department.. besides some of the best games are not graphic power houses

[Ck1x]

The funny thing is for a man preaching how scalable his UE4 will be towards the next generation of gaming. Wouldn't it actually have been more impressive for Epic to have ported the tech demo to the WiiU as well and showcase that it can run on that also! (albeit with lesser effects than the PS4 version of course) but that's something I would actually like to have seen though. Epic alone could have single handedly shown the industry what the major differences would have looked like across all the hardware. To anyone that states Nintendo still has poor relations reaching out to 3rd party companies. Epic Games was one of the very first 3rd party companies to have WiiU Devkits... At first they were talking extremely positive of the WiiU and how it would be more capable of maxing out the UE3 as the current consoles didn't.(At that time they hadn't even started talking about UE4 to the public.) When I think of maxing out UE3, I think of the effects shown off in the Samaritan demo. Which is UE3.9 and running on over 2.5Tflops of power, but to me is more impressive than the UE4 Demon Knight demo.(Once again I am not naive to think that a demo like that would look just as impressive on the WiiU as it does on a gtx680) but it would go to serve how scalable their technology is in the long run. The crazy thing is for anyone that read up on the original improvements of UE4 over UE3, know that it was said UE4 plans to be less of a resource hog and even more simplified with instructions on carrying out what use to be tedious graphical effects on UE3. So in the end it sounds as if UE4 would actually run much better on the PS3/360 than UE3 did!