Open UT3 beta demo soon

By Robert Purchese Published 10 October, 2007

"Within two weeks," says Rein.

Epic Games chieftain Mark Rein has said that the Unreal Tournament 3 beta demo will be out "within two weeks" - possibly as soon as this week.

It will only be playable on Windows and will be open to everyone that wants to join. Max OS X and Linux versions are being worked on, but no dates have been mentioned.

Rein confirmed its imminent arrival on the official forums, and said it will contain bot skirmishes as well as online multiplayer. The idea behind it is to get you lot running the game on all types of different machines, so that Epic can see how well it is performing and get pages of gameplay feedback.

The Epic Games boss was also keen to update fans on the state of the PS3 version that is due to launch simultaneously with the PC offering. Apparently it is in "great shape", and he hopes to have some visitors from fansites playing it soon.

Recently we heard that the eagerly awaited shooter had been delayed until 2008, although Rein contradicted the announcement from a financial statement by stating that Midway felt obliged to warn its shareholders of the possibility that UT3 might slip to next year.

We were also told that the much-flaunted cross-platform play between PC and PS3 will not be available at launch. This was down to lengthy PS3 certification processes with online content, which would have meant holding pack PC mods and updates so the two could be released simultaneously - something Rein said he wouldn't do to his loyal PC userbase.

Head over to our Unreal Tournament 3 gamepage for much more information.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 4 years ago

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

  • Haloboy #1 4 years ago

    Hooray!

    First!

  • mcwildcard #2 4 years ago

    My magic predicting stapler predicts Friday....

  • zuljin #3 4 years ago

    @mcwildcard
    Hmmm. Nothing to do with that link on the forums that says, urm, friday?

  • Caimbeul #4 4 years ago

    lets just hope it runs better than Bioshock on a PC with reasonable specs and MUCH better than the Crysis BETA which sucked as far as performance went + Tossers on-line which is why I hate on-line multiplayer and prefer bots and LAN play.

    [EDIT - couldnt spekll]
    Edited by 2 at 10/10/07 @ 13:24

  • L0cky #5 4 years ago

    The Crysis beta ran much better for me than bioshock or etqw oO

  • miiiguel #6 4 years ago

    PC gaming is a niche and it lost the wow factor...

  • rotmm #7 4 years ago

    Caimbeul,

    I suppose it all depends on how you define "reasonable specs". All I know is that BioShock ran well on my 8800GTX, quad core machine, as well as on my "reasonable spec" machine. In fact, I was surprised at how smoothly it ran.

  • Ryuken #8 4 years ago

    @miiiguel: what a joke.

  • Eraysor #9 4 years ago

    Thank god, I was worried I'd get no UT fix for years!

  • ScottyXTUK #10 4 years ago

    Hope it's good but I'm sceptical. Loved the original UT but UT2003 was crap and UT2004 wasn't much better. They ruined CTF by nerfing the translocator and CTF just felt wrong in UT2004 and so right in UT. Only saving grace of UT2004 was onslaught but that is pants now compared to the likes of BF2 etc.

    I really want this to be great as UT has a unique atmosphere and if they get the gameplay right it can be brilliant.

    Here's hoping.

  • DUFFKING #11 4 years ago

    Am I the only one who laughed at the 'Two Weeks' comment?

    He said that for the UT2003 demo, then it didn't appear for about 2 months, and there was a 100+ page thread (40 posts to page) on the official forums of people photoshopping marks head onto random images/movie posters so you had stuff like 'Two Weeks Notice' with mark rein's head photshopped onto Hugh Grant's.

  • mcwildcard #12 4 years ago

    @ zuljin: Nuh-uh, magic stapler... *looks shifty*

  • L0cky #13 4 years ago

    I'm presuming he said 'two weeks' as a joke.

    I'm hoping anyway.

  • chischis #14 4 years ago

    Though I don't play it any more, I've spent more time online with UT2004's Onslaught gametype than any other multi-player game I've tried. TF2 is threatening to muscle its way in, and will keep me busy for now, but I really am looking forward to UT3.

    Can't wait for this demo!