Unreal Technology Roadmap

UnrealEngine3 (UE3) is Epic's next-generation technology, intended for games shipping in 2006 and beyond on next-generation consoles (Xbox 360 and Playstation 3) and the latest PC graphics hardware. In order to support a cutting-edge feature set, UE3 will not be backwards-compatible with pre-DirectX9 hardware or current-generation consoles. UE3 is licensed separately from UE2, and it also has separate support web pages, email lists, IRC channels, etc.

This code has been proven in Gears of War (www.gearsofwar.com) and in the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3 (formerly Unreal Tournament 2007).

UnrealEngine2.5 (UE2.5) is the latest engine version for current-generation hardware. This code has been proven in Unreal Tournament 2004 (www.unrealtournament.com), and is the recommended starting point for new licensees seeking hardware flexibility not available with UE3. Aside from critical fixes, we are no longer developing software updates and features for UT2004; but any updates will be made available to licensees as well.

UnrealEngine2 (UE2) is the previous-generation technology, which supports DX8 and runs on the following platforms: PC, Mac, Linux and the following consoles: Xbox, and PS2. This code has been proven in Unreal Tournament 2003 (www.unrealtournament.com), which was later transitioned to UE2.5. UE2 is no longer under active development, and Epic plans no further games in-house using that technology. The final drop - UE2 v2227, available on the CodeDrop2227 page - includes all bug fixes that have occurred since build 2226, as well as a few enhancements for supporting other platforms. We will of course continue to support all licensees using UE2.

UnrealEngine2X (UE2X) is a highly optimized version of UnrealEngine2 only supported for Xbox, made for Unreal Championship 2 (www.liandriconflict.com). The code is available to all Xbox project licensees now that UC2 has been released. No further development is planned for UE2X after UC2, so that we may concentrate our efforts on supporting next-generation consoles through UE3.

For a deeper look into the family of Unreal Engine products, please see the Unreal Family Tree page.

For more information regarding the Unreal Engine technology, including licensing, please see the Unreal Technology site.

If you have any comments or questions about these plans, I'd encourage you to write me directly.

Michael Capps, Ph.D.
President, Epic Games
mike.capps@epicgames.com