I bet Gears multiplied the sum on his bank account by such a huge number, that he won't even have to work in the industry anymore, I can very well imagine this is the case, that he just wanted to retire. lol

And he doesn't have the rights to do an Unreal game, Epic does. And seeing their lack of interest in a SP Unreal game, this seems quite unlikely. But hey, maybe we get a new UT? DE is working on a well known AAA shooter, they didn't say which one yet, Epic is underemployed. Not having any hope, so won't be disappointed if this is not the case. lol

Lord_PorkSword wrote:

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Maybe he'll start his own studio and then Epic will sub-contract out to his studio to make a new Unreal game!

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I'm not as confident as you, I think he have better things to do now...

I think we have to stop dreaming, the true reason of the left of Cliff is not a kind of fairy tales IMO (Mark Rein, vice president of Epic said: “I’ll miss watching his star shine from such a close vantage point but I’ll still look forward to watching his continued success.” ah ah, what a laugh...)

The world of the video game is an industry where legend has no place. Only money justify the decisions taken, I observe that every day on my own company.

I'm not sure that the games like UT have a future, for a lots of reasons, starting with the fact that this kind of game do not make money during their life cycle. All the extended content is bring for free by the community, and it's not acceptable by the money men.

How many video games are release with an level editor theses days? Do you think it's due to hazard? And if there is one, they are more and more technical and complex to use, and with less and less content.

For me it's clear that they all prefer paying DLC to free content created by the community, that's the new deal.

But at the discharge to the game industry, have you already think how it's more and more difficult to satisfy people, especially when it's comes to a new opus of a franchise like UT, If you keep everything as it was on the previous opus, the peps will say, "nothing new", if you change some stuffs or add new ones, peps will say, "they have kill the original idea of the game", etc etc...

 Plus the actual society is more and more a society of the "zapping", How many games have you finish theses days? I have read somewhere that the players, encouraged by the policy of promotion by the Steam platform, never finish the game for 80% of them (but at 100% paid). This system is rather perverse, people are encouraged to buy games but almost never played these games. What happened to the goal of a game? And the respect of the dev's work? Industry simply does not care...  (for those who are interrested, it's not the one I speak about, but take a look to that article, it's in french sorry)

And for all this reasons, I would said the PC games in generally are died, but it's seems the dyes aren't already cast (check this article, it's interesting)... we will see !

To conclude, If you want a next opus of your preferred game on the UDK engine, only the community can make it happen! that's my point of view.

(of course when I say "you" all around this text, it's not for you in particularly Lord my friend, I have just extrapolate my mind from your quote)

A real shame about Cliffy.

IMO; it isn't always about profit 100% of the time however most of the time it does come down to the all might "dollar" - I'll give ya 1 small example at the end of this post.

I personally think that the Unreal Tournament franchise will continue at some point; as far as when, where, and how - your guess is as good as mine. Let me remind you though that the UT series is the flagship for the engine where PC gaming is concerned (GOW is a Microsoft gimmick; an exclusive to help sell X360's / some people only own them solely for the purpose of playing GOW 2 & 3 / I might be one of those people for all you know, MS and their all mighty dollar fueling their exclusive console sales has certainly manipulated Epic in ways we never would have imagined) Like all good things though it will come to an end and it will eventually lose its magic; meanwhile Epic might realize that its roots are in the PC platform and as much as the console manufactures would like you to believe that PC gaming is dead or dying, i'm here to tell you its alive and well, it may not be as profitable for obvious reasons but its certainly more scalable which increases the potential of offering something consumers want.

I've played PC games for years, we own all the consoles and spend more time on the PC's - my kids prefer to use their computers over the consoles given the choice between the 2. Once you've seen the potential of a PC gaming experience over a console - there really is no competition.

The dumbed down simplification of the console platform over the PC platform is why it appeals to kids (this is likely where the majority of the profits come from) - With the world in a financial recession those days are numbered if not over all ready; I anticipate to watch the prices of console games to come down to their PC counterparts in the next few years. Are PC's still profitable to the gaming industry? - 100% so they certainly are, - are PC games going to disappear anytime soon? 100% not a chance in hell. However investors and market speculators/manipulators would love to us all believe the opposite to boost their already more profitable console game sales by driving the value of their stock up and to sucker people into investing in the planforms.

BTW - have you guys checked out a little game called Torchlight II? - its pretty slick (from some of the former creators that worked for Blizzard on Diablo 3) - its $20.00, has lan play, dungeon crawler - etc. Evidently when the devs started seeing all the crap Blizzard was going to pull (always online DRM, etc.) they decided to come up with their own little gig. - While it is somewhat cartoonish - its still quite slick and has all the key elements to keep ya entertained for hours - I'd suggest to buy the Perfectgames version directly from Runic for $19.99 and skip the Steam / DRM version. One copy / one key everyone on LAN can play upto 8 players. Also if you do get it, after ya patch it make a shortcut directly to the Torchlight II executable and skip the launcher / updater.