It seems these days that Epic don’t know where their minds are at. First off they are members of the PC Gaming Alliance which is a nice enough thing for them do seeing as they have been PC aficionados for so many years. Then we had Cliffy B claim that PC Gaming was in disarray which was followed by Mark Rein calling him an idiot.

More recently Tim Sweeney commented that mainstream PCs are no good for gaming and now we see Tim say that Unreal Engine 4 will be console focused!

TG Daily: Let’s talk about your game visions for the future and the next Unreal Engine? Where is EPIC going with the Unreal Engine 3.5 and 4.0?

Sweeney: The Unreal engine is really tied to a console cycle. We will continue to improve Unreal Engine 3 and add significant new features through the end of this console cycle. So, it is normal to expect that we will add new stuff in 2011 and 2012. We’re shipping Gears of War now; we’re just showing the next bunch of major tech upgrades such as soft-body physics, destructible environments and crowds. There is a long life ahead for Unreal Engine 3. Version 4 will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft’s successor for the Xbox 360, Sony’s successor for the Playstation 3 - and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs, then that also. PCs will follow after that.

From TG Daily interview.

Epic really don’t know what they want, they are members of the PCGA which is aiming to promote the the PC and improve it as an all round platform…but then we have other Epic guys saying they are going console focused. Someone needs to get their act together at Epic and make sure they are all speaking from the same page!

Legendary gaming developer and publisher Atari has been announced to be moving onto Steam. The company has linked up with Valve and the Steam platform to deliver a dazzling array of games, initially only to North Americans.

“Atari is excited to team up with Steam and deliver great games through a digital platform that our fans have asked for,” said Nizzi Renaud, Vice President of Online Entertainment, Atari, Inc. “We look forward to making an extensive collection of games, across many genres, available to Steam’s extensive, globally-connected community.”

“We’re proud to welcome to Steam a company that has become synonymous with video games,” said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. “Atari cemented video games into the consciousness of modern culture and continues to produce a unique mix of games that appeal to a variety of audiences, as represented by the line-up heading to Steam.”

With games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Indigo Prophecy and Act of War being made available now, and games such as The Witcher arriving on Steam soon Atari is making a concerted effort to kick off this new partnership with a bang.

Time will tell whether Atari achieve any success on Steam, but anything to boost the performances of this company should be welcomed with open arms.

I must say it is annoying when everyone knows something is going to be announced, but due to NDAs and company policies nobody can confirm anything until a certain date. This happened with Red Alert 3 when I knew it was going to be announced…but nobody was able to reveal anything until it was officially announced!

This time something similar has happened, in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK, at the back it gives us a glimpse of what to expect in the next issue, release April 10th.

(Taken from CVG)

Ominous reference to a new ‘Dawn’ and a silhouette of a strikingly Dawn of War type unit. With Soulstorm, expansion to the original Dawn of War having just been released then I think we can safely assume Dawn of War 2 is due to be announced.

First information regarding Bioshock 2 has been revealed:

2K Games said today that BioShock 2, the sequel to the wholly owned and internally developed title, is being developed by 2K Marin and is planned for release in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. The critically acclaimed BioShock title has sold over 2 million units worldwide since its launch in August.

That is all the information available. Source.

Update - Kotaku has also revealed that Ken Levine will in some way be involved in Bioshock 2.

This is intriguing I must say. The Game Wizard that they have on the site is very easy to use, it simply asks you some questions and gives you some options allowing you to create a game. It will be very simple but, well you have made a game!

Using the Game Creator, a tool you download is infinitely more complex…well it is for me at any rate! It seems like an actual game creation tool, rather than a simple Q&A = Game that happens with the Wizard. The Creator is Flash based, and doing stuff is pretty easy, I got a background and a ‘creature’ to be placed on this white background. They both came from the assets folder that comes free with the Game Creator download.

You can do lots of stuff like changing collision points, creating behaviours etc. but it all seems a bit ‘what?’ to me. There is no manual that comes with it, and the online help isn’t the easiest to get into and use. I am sure that if I had some better understanding of how the Creator worked I would be able to make something…decent out of it. As it is, all I managed to do was the following.

Good eh? Well not really! It sure looks fun though :P

I have seen some decent enough user-created games that have been made by other users already, nothing has caught my eye, but playing with a laptop mousepad isn’t really that conducive to good gaming.

I am sure that The Sims Carnival will continue to evolve and grow, if only they had included some video tutorials, or any kind of tutorial with the Game Creator and it would be much better in my mind. However, it is a beta so time will tell!

Back to the game wizard though for me…wish me luck my friends!

The past few weeks have seen numerous comments by some leading figures at Epic concerning the death of the PC, the PC Gaming Alliance and whatever else they feel like chatting about. In a new interview with TG Daily we see Tim Sweeney, the man behind the Unreal games, take a swipe at ‘Mainsteam PCs’ and integrated graphics.

TG Daily: But we mostly talk about conventional retail sales. Do you see an increasing divide between the Pc and consoles?

Sweeney: Retail stores like Best Buy are selling PC games and PCs with integrated graphics at the same time and they are not talking about the difference [to more capable gaming PCs]. Those machines are good for e-mail, web browsing, watching video. But as far as games go, those machines are just not adequate. It is no surprise that retail PC sales suffer from that. Online is different, because people who go and buy games online already have PCs that can play games. The biggest problem in this space right now is that you cannot go and design a game for a high end PC and downscale it to mainstream PCs. The performance difference between high-end and low-end PC is something like 100x.

He has a good point about many PCs that can be purchased at mainstream stores are utterly crap for playing games, and most PCs nowadays should come ready installed with a low-end graphics card at the very minimum so people can actually play some games.

However, anything that comes out of Epic does nothing to help solve this problem right now. They make fantastic 3D engines…but they are often so high-spec and -tec that even those with somewhat decent gaming rigs are struggling to play games from Epic and their engines.

If their involvement in the PCGA changes their approach then that would be brilliant.

I posted a little while ago about The Sims Carnival and now I can provide a little update. I have been accepted into the beta, and within five minutes of logging in I had made my first game!

Now while what I created was pretty basic, it was fun to give the tools a very quick run through. You can find my game here to give it a quick play. Pretty simple Space Invaders kinda thing, over time I will aim to make something a bit more in-depth.

Well worth checking out and trying to get into the beta, I should have some more impressions later in the week!

Zerg rush anyone? Check out this new video for Starcraft 2 showing off the Zerg!

Mmm….zergy! This video has made me want to play some Starcraft and actually complete it for once! *faints with shock*

Also you can see some of the Zerg cinematic intro trailer in the following video.

Thanks GameTrailers for a Zergy day!

Argh! World in Conflict annoyed me to hell earlier, and I now hate it for not implementing some kind of auto-save feature! Third mission, got to the last objective…and somehow I fecked it up. Had to go start the whole thing all over again! :@

My fault for not saving myself, but it is maddening at times!

GameSpot is reporting that Kane’s Wrath had gone gold! The upcoming expansion to C&C3 is due to land on March 26th for the PC and in the summer for the 360. Intriguingly the game will also come with a beta key for Red Alert 3.

Why do I mention Kane’s Wrath going gold? Well because I want to get my grubby hands on it and give it a right old reviewing!