Why was Epic's Unreal Engine 4 demo kept secret?

Videogamer: So. We're sat in a presentation at GDC. Mark Rein, Epic's VP of Making Noise, is showing off the new bells and whistles for the Unreal 3 engine, like a carnival hawker trying to sell you his magic cloth.

[raytraceme]

I couldn't care less if UE4 went exclusive to microsoft and the next xbox. UE3 was the far worst engine this gen for the ps3 and sony had no choice but to accept that most multi-plats used it.

I would rather sony create a whole new engine for the ps4 and make devs use that. So then we could get games that rival the uncharted of the next gen.

[gamingdroid]

Unreal by far is not the worst engine.... UE3 alone is used by hundreds if not thousands of games. In fact, some of the most impressive games this generation is powered by UE3.

If anything, UE3 has proven to be extremely versatile and flexible so I expect nothing less of UE4. Epic has pretty much been a leader so far.

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

These clowns don't understand engines anyway. UE will continue to evolve and outpace 99.9% of the engines out there. There isn't an engine more flexible or versatile. Anyone that tells you otherwise should be avoided, lol. With hat said, I am impressed with Dices's engine, which went from powering a shooter to being used for a driving/racing game. For other engines to do that, it'd probably take a couple of years for them to be that flexible. Why do people think they're favorite engine only powers ONE game? They're just not on the level of Unreal's versatility. Point. Blank. .

[Persistantthug]

"I would rather sony create a whole new engine for the ps4 and make devs use that."
_____________________________ _

And you think this would be a good business strategy?

[Machioto]

You know that Sony has the phyre engine it's cross platform and I think has good graphics.

[Persistantthug]

obviously, as a developer, that wouldn't be effective at all if you wanted to put your game on XBOX 360 or any Nintendo products.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/w...

[CHARLIEBROWNE]

As i mentioned before most multi plat devs depend far to much on the Unreal engine, hence no real significant leap in the graphics department it has seen better days.

Devs/studios who are passionate create their own engines.

Hopefully you folks get this.

[ArmrdChaos]

Most studios don't have the resources or the time to create there own engines. For most it has less to do about passion and more about economics.

But....if the licensing increases beyond their means then you might see more studios switching or attempting to role their own...for better or worse.

[humbleopinion]

Yeah, Unreal Engine is such a poor engine that it only managed to run like, what, 3 of the top visually looking games and critically acclaimed games in the past half a year? Gears of War 3, Arkham City and Mass Effect 3. I'm pretty sure tons of other engines have such a proven track record...

Not to mention how all the games look and play alike on this engine which is only capable of creating brown looking shoter games. Some examples from 2011 are Bulletstorm, Dungeon Defenders, Mortal Kombat, Shadow of the Damned and so on - zero versatility as we can obviously see.

Not to mention how the engine is pretty dead now, and it's not like we're expecting nesr future games to launch with unreal engine. Except for perhaps Bordelands 2, XCOM Enemy Unknown, Bioshock Infinite, Tribes Ascend, Dust 514, Hawken and a few others.

BTW: as Persistantthug mentioned, Sony already created an engine for this generation, and it was very good but just wasn't just as good as Unreal Engine.
(And actually, Phyreengine is also working on the X360: Dark Souls is just one recent example of this lovely engine at work.)

[raytraceme]

help me out how did mass effect 3 look good at all?

GEOW 3 was good but it goes to show ue3 has done a piss poor job with the ps3 since the engine is being catered to the xbox.

I will give you arkham city but only because the devs put a LOT of effort into the game.

wraith just shut up. U are an ignorant microsoft apple fanboy.

Also there are other engines that exceed ue3 like the cryengine 3 and frostbite 3. However sony in house engines like the ones used for Infamous 2, Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, god of war 3, gran turismo 5, and some future games like sly 4, and the last guardian, all represent a different genre and shows that sony does have the engine to have the best looking game out there for every genre.

p.s. to all of you that can NOT read i said ue was the worst engine for the PS3!!!! not the xbox or the pc.

[humbleopinion]

@raytraceme
Mass Effect 3 has some amazing vistas and great character details on the models. I Haven't seen many games with such good (and varied) facial models. You can check the actual game or read the reviews if you are hesitating to make a purchase.
Also, you don't need to "give me" Arkham City: the game speaks for itself, and as much as Rockstedy put into the game, they are still a small studio that managed to deliver such a stellar game the in two years time, and the game looks awesome on consoles without holding back the PC: The Physx effects on the PC are second to none.

As for Gears of War 3... do you know how ridiculous you sound when you claim that is shows how ue3 is poor on the PS3? Gears looks so good because it's a platform exclusive catering to the advantages of a single platform developed with high budget by the people who created the engine itself. Just for the same reason any high budget game on the X360 or the PS3 looks good, and if epic were to do an exclusive PS3 Unreal engine game it will probably also look stunning because these guys really know what they do (you don't think that the PS3 hardware is THAT outdated, right?)

Frostbyte 2 and Cryengine 3 are also amazingly looking engines, but none of them has the track record of Unreal. In fact, both of these engines have about 2 games in their showcase, and they have just one flagship game (Check out NFS The Run running on Frostbyte: it doesn't look half as good ad Battlefield 3 running on the same engine).
Also, both engines were heavily optimized for high end PCs and the games don't look as good on the console (infact, they lack many features available in the latest Unreal Engine titles on consoles). How come you complain about Unreal engine performance on the PS3 when Crysis 2 itself runs at a lower resolution on the PS3 compared to the X360?

Also, who's wraith and why the hell are you calling someone Microsoft-Apple fanboy? That's the first time I'm hearing such a bizarre expression: how can someone be a fanboy of both MS and Apple? You sound yourself like an ignorant fanboy - the Sony kind.

I mean, you're actually dissing every unreal engine game and then giving the usual list of PS3 games which include some unreleased games which you don't even know how they'll look (TLG, Sly 4), engines which are running just a single game/franchise in a single genre and have zero versatility (GT, GOW, Uncharted), and some games that are actually behind the curve (Killzone and especially infamous). How low can you go?

You sound like someone who's just pissed off that some UE based games (and bear in mind that not all games) run better on the PC/X360, but in that case why are you blaming the engine developer and not the specific game developer, or perhaps the hardware manufacturer.

[_Aarix_]

@raytraceme    

Wow stop being so butthurt will ya.
The unreal engine was used for some of the est games such as Gears of war, Mass Effect batman and bioshock. The Engine is actually one of the best and pretty easy going for developers especially since its very cheap.

[CHARLIEBROWNE]

Probably because whatever number they shove on the end of it it's still going to be behind the times.

[fei-hung]

Unreal engine was good at the start of the gen and got worse as time passed by. The weaknesses were further highlighted when devs with their own engines raised the bar in the likes of Killzone, Uncharted, LA Noire, Battlefield, GOW etc.

At the end of the day though, it is like an open platform engine. Its not meant to be superior, its meant to be a 1 for all engine. A cheap solution to building games on multiple platforms.

[Rowland]

give it to EA !