Sony, unlike Silicon Knights, is pledging their support to Epic. Speaking with Game Informer, Sony’s Head of Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, said that, “If we’re honest, we didn’t do enough of a good job supporting them and getting them the tools and technology early enough.” Harrison goes on to detail how Sony has given them assistance in the form of a crack squad of engineers who will help the optimization of UE3 for the PS3’s cell technology.

Sony’s support comes with great timing, following the lawsuit filed by UE3 licensee, Silicon Knights (SK). SK has filed the suit with Epic over the alleged breach of contract concerning the production of a useful UE3 engine. See our previous post to learn more.

It is not that surprising that Sony comes to the aid of Epic. Afterall, at the E3 2007 Sony Conference Epic announced that Unreal Tournament 3 would be a timed exclusive for the PS3. If there is one thing that Sony needs it is exclusives. Well, that and a real fucking price drop.

Chufmoney

Some vacation. While it will be nice to flee the everyday banality of a college town during the summer for a while with a very pretty girl, something seems counterproductive to the idea of “Vacation” about writing about featured video games there for this site. And yet, that is very likely why I’ll be doing it. Because I love you. And I wanted you to know that.

Anyway. First up is Maximum PC and PC Gamers four day PC gaming extravaganza, their “Gaming University”, where in addition to trying not to smell too much like a stereotypical comic nerd, you might have the chance to rub shoulders with staff from PC Gamer and the Official Xbox Magazine. Unreal Tournament 3 deathmatches will be run every hour, with prizes from Intel and others serving as spoils for the victors. Following the “University” motif, there will be, er, seminars (?) on RTS games and RPGs. While there are quite a few games there that I don’t especially care about, I’ll definitely be checking out CDV’s Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Holmes vs. Cthulhu? Yes please.), Southpeak Interactive’s Two Worlds, and maybe even the Korean MMORPG title Sword of the New World, courtesy of K2 Network.

On Saturday, in between checking out the Gaslamp District with the significant other, stopping by the World Sandcastle Championship, and trying to hunt down Warren Ellis, Sony Online Entertainment is hosting a party as well from 3:30 to 8:00, which is actually an early finish for Comic Con shenanigans, but I’m not complaining. Since it’s SOE, and not, say SCEA, there won’t be big name PS3 titles around, but there will be peeks at The Agency and Pirates of the Burning Sea, and “live music”. Anyone else going?

-Aegies

Epic Games Vice-President Mark Rein likes to talk to people, and when he does, things often slip out. This was exactly the case during his recent appearance on Spike TV’s Game Head with Geoff Keighley. In speaking about the somewhat surprising announcement that Gears of War would be coming to Windows much faster than anyone expected (and to XP as well), Rein also slipped in an even bigger surprise: Gears is coming to Macs as well, and so is Unreal Tournament 3:

In the interview, after Keighley asked Rein if he had any misgivings about Epic’s decision to bring that game to Sony’s PlayStation 3, a competing platform, Rein emphasized Epic’s position as an independent developer of game technology. The company first showed Unreal Engine 3 running a PlayStation 3 development console in 2005, long before the console was available to the public.

Rein then added, “Don’t forget, we’re also doing Macintosh.”

“Gears of War is coming to the Mac?” asked Keighley.

“Yes, Gears is going to come to the Mac and so is UT,” said Rein, referring to Unreal Tournament 3.

This is interesting on a few levels. First, one of the sort of journalism memes going around since Gears was hinted at for PC is that though the game might not be solely on the 360, it was still “exclusive to Microsoft platforms”, which is pretty obviously not the case. Second, I think the migration of Gears to Mac could well speak to Epic’s battles with Microsoft about the right to give away content, as well as Live for Windows and its growing pains. Third, Microsoft’s hold on Gears as publisher and partial rights holder is not as tight as a lot of people thought. It does sort of add a bit of credence to the theories floating around about Gears of War side stories popping up on other consoles. Well Microsoft? What’s your move? I hope it involves the words “free content” and “open platform”.

-Aegies