We haven’t flogged the Unreal Engine horse enough lately so it is about time we gave it another round. This comes courtesy of Alan Willer, Epic Games’ senior technical artist who has mentioned that the upcoming Unreal Engine 4 won’t be coming to current-gen smartphones and tablets.
However, instead of taking the usual stance of not even considering Android and sticking with dry humping the fruit OS instead (we joke, sort of), Alan Willer made sure to make it clear that this also applies to iOS and not just Android. In an interview with Digital Spy, Alan dropped a couple of gems for us to think over:
“I’m sure at some point mobile will be a major consideration, but not the current generation of iOS devices right now. We’re definitely going to be very aggressive about what platforms we put it on, but there’s definitely going to be a minimum spec in which, okay, this is our entry level for Unreal Engine 4. Unreal Engine 3 is obviously working very well for us on the current generation of mobile devices and probably going forward for quite a while”
This does not mean that developers won’t be able to push the limits of the current generation of mobile devices if they want to give it a shot. There just won’t be any real official support for it inside Unreal Engine 4 when it arrives. Basically the same way it happened with Unreal Engine 3. Nothing came about in terms of support until games started to be developed using it.
“If all we’re looking at is support for more rendering features and speed, then UE3 will continue to work on those [devices], you just won’t have all the tools that UE4 has. Or you can do UE4, and have a set of limits on what you can do, and have access to those tools. I don’t know if there’s going to be a hard fast, ‘You must change over here’. For a while it obviously makes sense to just ship using UE3, then we’ll sort out what our mobile plans are that will become part of the UE4 suite of abilities.”
In a way he is right. Until Epic figures out what their mobile strategy will be regarding Unreal Engine 4, there really is no point in switching over. Unreal Engine 3 does a great job as it is but eventually gamers and developers will want more and want Unreal Engine 4. Mobile support will have to come.
Website Referenced: PocketGamer
