While there isn’t a ton of competition in the third-party engine market, Unreal Engine 3 continues its dominance with a deal struck today between Epic and Warner Bros. The licensing agreement will make UE3 available to all studios with games to be published by Warner Bros. On the list are Monolith, Snowblind, and Traveler’s Tales.
For some of Warner Bros. biggest studios, however, the publisher announced that UE3 will be the exclusive engine until 2014. Rocksteady, developers of Batman: Arkham Asylum and the upcoming Batman: Arkham City, are already working with the engine and will continue doing so with any other games they have in the pipeline between now and 2014. NetherRealm, the developer behind Mortal Kombat, will also be exclusively Unreal Engine 3-based until 2014. In the case of both studios, the news seems to be business as usual.
Epic Games has been pimping out the engine lately, most likely in an effort to court publishers like Warner Bros. into long-term contracts. A new video demonstration showed off the tech’s potential going forward, which is looking good. Games such as Bulletstorm and Gears of War 3 are already incorporating some of the engine’s advanced lighting techniques.
While some might scoff at the idea of the Unreal Engine becoming so ubiquitous, it seems Epic has gone to great lengths to make the engine more flexible. The days of spotting an UE3 game from a mile away may be coming to an end, as even games like Gears of War 3 are so colorful that they’re nearly unrecognizable compared with their predecessors.
