id doesn't worry about Epic - Nix

By Tom Bramwell Published 9 August, 2007

Won't have to undercut UE3.

Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 may be the choice for a large number of PS3 and Xbox 360 developers, but id Software's Steve Nix claims that when it comes to engines id keeps its eyes straight ahead.

"I don't spend much time looking at Epic's current offering or what their product line is - we've always just done our own thing at id, so we don't spend too much time thinking about them," Nix, id's business development director, tells Eurogamer in an interview published today.

Nix says that id Tech 5 - the developer's current offering - faces "a number of competitors", not the least of which is developers deciding to develop their own technology, but that its virtualised texture solution was a "paradigm shift" that will catch people's attention.

He also argues that id's is the cleanest multi-platform implementation. "What's really unique is that when an artist builds an asset they don't know what they're building it for. They build the exact same model, the exact same level, and it doesn't matter what platform they're putting it on. That's a huge breakthrough," he explains. id Tech 5 supports PC, PS3, 360 and Mac.

Nix also dismisses suggestions that id will be forced to undercut Epic's technology pricing to compete. "The only reason we haven't been very public about id Tech 5 pricing is because honestly we haven't developed our final plan there," he says. "[I expect] that we're not going to lose business based on price."

Read the full Steve Nix interview elsewhere on Eurogamer.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • sanctusmortis #1 5 years ago

    Well, the Doom 3 engine was very popular, so...

  • drumbaby #2 5 years ago

    Tbh, I don't think Epic spend too much time looking at thir engine once they've flogged it on.

    :)

  • Tonka #3 5 years ago

    Leaders don't react.

  • afray #4 5 years ago

    PARADIGM SHIFT!

  • penhalion #5 5 years ago

    @afray

    Yea apparently texture blending is a new concept.....

  • L0cky #6 5 years ago

    It's a bit more than that oO

  • Hunam #7 5 years ago

    I'm not sure if you were making a joke, but the doom 3 engine pretty much only had one licensee, which was Human Head for Prey, the rest have been made by id or in conjunction with id.

    Plus they are lucky that all the UE3 games not made by Epic or Ubi are all really ugly and they have a nice lawsuit with some bad press to go round, makes selling id tech 5 easier when everyone hates your rival.
    Edited by 1 at 09/08/07 @ 10:24

  • Gurgeh #8 5 years ago

    Interesting walkthrough of the Rage engine:

    [link url=http://www.fileshack.com/file.x /10929/HD+Rage+FileShack+QuakeCon+2007+Walkthrough
    ]http://ww w.fileshack.com/file.x/10929/HD...[/link]

    The merits of the tech are not that it looks better than the opposition, but that it reduces development time (or allows you to do more in the same time) by allowing designers to make changes "on the fly" and by working equally well across all platforms.

    *edit* IIRC they didn't sell many licenses of the Doom 3 engine, but they also made more money from Doom 3 than any other game they made.
    Edited by 1 at 09/08/07 @ 11:18

  • bdc #9 5 years ago

    The thing is, this engine doesn't have texture constraints, first of its kind... I'm sure you remember all those bullshots of games where the textures are so high-res that when they finally do come out, the textures are low-res blurry messes. Halo 3 comes to mind. This wouldn't happen with Tech 5.

  • Royal Fool #10 5 years ago

    It doesn't support the Wii? OMGWTFBBQ!

  • sharpfish #11 5 years ago

    "Plus they are lucky that all the UE3 games not made by Epic or Ubi are all really ugly and they have a nice lawsuit with some bad press to go round, makes selling id tech 5 easier when everyone hates your rival."

    Gears looks great and i'm sure UT3 will too... however, from what I've seen of ubisoft games they are not anywhere close to using the full potential of the engine, they look like old tech (R6Vegas for one).

    (and yes, this is on a c2d e6850 + 8800gtx at full detail).

    At the moment i'm actually underwhelmed by Unreal engine 3 (based on the majority of games using it) and even now Prey or Quake 4 look more impressive in a lot of areas and that's older tech.

    BTW I'm a big epic fanboy and lover of all things 'unreal' so i'm not sticking up for Id for the sake of it, they just fkin rock with their technology.