No Unreal Tournament "for several years"

By Tom Bramwell Published 24 July, 2009

Epic has other priorities, says Sweeney.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has said that we're unlikely to see another Unreal Tournament game "for several years".

"Unreal Tournament is certainly a major long-term priority but we're planning not to release a major retail game in the series for several years," Sweeney told G4TV in an interview my browser doesn't like.

"So we have that effort somewhat on hold while we work on a few other initiatives."

That's despite the critical success of the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Unreal Tournament 3, and of course the impressive post-release support offered by the Titan Pack, which reinvigorated sales many months after release.

Sweeney suggested that the community was still getting loads out of the game anyway, remarking, "We almost solve the Unreal Tournament 4 and 5 problem ourselves by just making this toolset available because the community has done more than we could have ever hoped to do internally."

Picture of Tom.

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 (19) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Dizzy #1 3 years ago

    Too busy making a good game ;)

  • matrim83 #2 3 years ago

    I thought that UT sold rather poorly on the consoles (which could be the reason for this) despite the critical success.

  • ChthonicEcho #3 3 years ago

    Sounds reasonable. There is a four year gap between UT2k4 and UT3, so I am not at all surprised that it'll be a while until we see another Unreal Tournament.

    I find it good, purely because if you approach a franchise after a few years developing other games, you might add something fresh instead of struggling to throw in new ideas. It works for the films industry as well, Christopher Nolan taking breaks between his Batman films being a noteworthy example.

  • bluem4gic #4 3 years ago

    Unreal Tournament 3 is unfortunately the worse one in the series

    A return to the heyday of UT2004 will be much appreciated

    I assume the Mark Rein is now seeing dollar signs with the current revenue that Epic must be generating selling their engine to developers + GOW franchise

    Hopefully the next time they make an unreal game. They will sit down and discuss it instead of producing such a uninspired, dry game that was more streamlined for the console gamers rather that the hard grit PC gamers who has supported them from day one

    Unreal 2 anyone?
    Edited by 1 at 24/07/09 @ 13:04

  • Hunam #5 3 years ago

    UT3 is easily the worst in the series and not even that good of a game in my opinion and many others judging by the lack of servers up for it.

  • Whizzo #6 3 years ago

    I thought the Titan pack did a good job of revitalising UT3 but it still wasn't as good as it could have been, I think the fact that a game called Unreal Tournament that didn't have a tournament in it was a bit daft too.

  • Katsumoto #7 3 years ago

    UT3 was miles better than 2k3 in my opinion. Though of course the Campaign was unforgivably awful ;) I still really enjoy playing deathmatch and capture the flag with my mates though, I think the panning it's received in some circles has been rather disproportionate.

    Obviously still nowhere near UT99 of course

  • the_mtfr #8 3 years ago

    I enjoy UT 1 and UT 3 immensely, I cannot stand the UT-s 2003&2004. I've bought UT 3 after the Titan Pack was released and am still happily deathmatching every other night on my PC so Sweeney's announcement makes me happy.

    Still waiting for Ryan Gordon to give an update on the still-wip native Linux client port though.
    Edited by 1 at 24/07/09 @ 12:20

  • Shakey_Jake33 #9 3 years ago

    UT3 is indeed an improvement on the mediocre 2003/4, but it's still massivelty inferior to the original UT.

    We're all allowed our own opinions, of course. However, the fact that the original UT servers are more populated than the UT3 servers says a lot, the game still hasn't converted sections of the existing fanbase.

  • DUFFKING #10 3 years ago

    I don't get the UT3 hate... UT2003 was by far the worst in the series.

    At least UT3 had some semblance of balance and a few decent maps. UT2003 was awful, horrible flat map design, underpowered weapons, the character models were basically midgets (honestly, you were about 3 foot tall in the game), the hitboxes were off... I could have actually forgiven most of that if there were at least a few good maps, but there weren't any worth playing. They even screwed up the DM-Curse remake. UT2004 was better, although the headshot hitboxes still meant you could shoot a guy right in the centre of the face with a sniper rifle and not even hit the guy, but at least they designed a few maps to play well rather than maps to look good.

    The weapons were really quite annoying too, they all felt and sounded so weak. UT3 had better map design, more powerful weapons, and was much closer in spirit to the original game, which is still the best in the series by some distance. The stupid trick jumping rubbish in 03/04 was silly too. UT is at its best when it's stripped down to the basics like the original, and UT3 was closer to that than any of the others IMO.

  • Buran #11 3 years ago

    I'm not agree with some criticism to the game. In terms of movement, weapons balance, map design, etc. the game is maybe the best in the series, or at least closer to the original UT. Also, I love the k+m support in my PS3 -I have the PC and PS3 versions-. Despite the bad campaign and the initial lower amount of maps, the REAL problem of the game is other:

    Today most popular fps multiplayer franchises (COD and BF, with Halo and KZ2 also in consoles) are based in unlock items or achievements, and the gameplay is simple and direct. Instead, UT III has no clases, no unlocks, no ranks and the game demands tons of skill, keeping away "casual players". I like how UT III is, but most of the people dislike the game.

    I'm afraid that Epic must change radically the game in a future iteration if want the same degree of succes as in Gears campaign in Xbox 360.

  • Nithron #12 3 years ago

    Personally I thought UT3 felt more like UT99 than 2k3 and 2k4, which was a good thing - i really didn't get on with the first two sequels.

    The campaign was bollocks, it's true, but it was deliberately so. If those intros weren't played for laughs deliberately, then Epic somehow made them so bad that they accidentally backed into comic genius.

    On the other hand Gears of War was pretty funny in that regard, so maybe it really was an accident...

  • Bander #13 3 years ago

    What about Unreal Championship? The second one featured a lot of good ideas that could invigorate the Unreal franchise if taken further.

    UT3's problem for me was that it looked amazing, but at the same time quite ridiculous when you had heavy cyber-army-dudes still running backwards, sideways and jumping all over the place. This is normal for FPS games, but it's an immersion-breaker unless the graphics are poor. Epic put a lot of thought into the controls and animation in Gears of War, while UT3 was still moving like a late '90s FPS.

  • Perfecto #14 3 years ago

    As soon as vehicles were added to Unreal the maps got larger and the close quaters intensity that made Unreal Tournament special dissappeared. Using a Flak cannon in expansive open areas just isn't fun. Bring back the original I say and give us back our seriously overpowered rocket launcher!

  • metalangel #15 3 years ago

    Yeah, UT3 failed because idiots were all playing CoD4 and Halo 3 despite both being vastly inferior to UT3.

    UT3 is, IMHO, the best UT since the original. 2003 was utter cack, 2004 was much better, but there is just so much to do in UT3 (its Warfare mode alone has more depth than all of BF1943) that I'm still finding cool new stuff.

  • Triggerhappytel #16 3 years ago

    Clearly a case of Unreal 3 not lighting the charts alight and Gears selling like hot cakes, so I'm not surprised Unreal is having a hiatus. I expect it'll be back in three or four years.

  • TitusCrow #17 3 years ago

    When sweeney has the finished 1st iteration of the ut4 eng ready and the next console gen rolls round, thats when i see the next installment of UT. I hated ut3 worse than getting a barrel of piss for xmas. It was a horrible hybrid of a game not really working on consoles and a disaster of a game on pc because of design choices to try to get both markets.

    When they do it the better do it right - ut is a skill game!

  • chessboxer #18 3 years ago

    They don't need a new Unreal Tournament (it would be nice to play Unreal 3 though), they need to make UT99 a browser game. Do it Epic!

  • mbsfaridi #19 1 year ago

    They are just waiting for ps4 and xbox 720 to come out then they'll release unreal 4 and unreal tournament 4