Rein: Wii is "just not our medium"

By Robert Purchese Published 8 July, 2008

Epic wants to push high-end technology.

Mark Rein has said asking Epic to make games for Wii is like asking a sculptor to paint a picture.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz he said his studio likes to push high-end technology and he has no plans to do anything else until that dries up.

"No, we don't have any plans to make something for the Wii. That's like asking a sculptor when he's going to start painting. That's just not our medium," said Rein. "That's not our area of expertise. Our area of expertise is the more high-end consoles and things that push technology higher. That's what we do.

"There's a lot more water in that well for us; when that runs dry then maybe we'd have to think of doing something else, but I don't think that well is going to run dry any time soon."

Epic Games is now hard at work on Gears of War 2, which is due out exclusively on Xbox 360 this November. Rein was coy over its projected success, sensibly claiming it will be "up to the fans to decide" whether it will outsell the 2006 original.

Head over to GamesIndustry.biz for the full interview with Mark Rein.

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 (33) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • spazmo #1 4 years ago

    Another Eurogamer 'bait' artcle...
    no wonder this site is going down the shitter.

  • orakio #2 4 years ago

    Could port epic pinball to the wii though

  • Eraser #3 4 years ago

    Rein has said this before and he's right. The stuff Epic does, and the same goes for id Software as well I guess, is just not something the Wii is suitable for.

  • bad09 #4 4 years ago

    I see his point but I don't think family friendly Ninty would want Epic anyway....

  • anomagnus #5 4 years ago

    what would be the point in doing it for the wii?

    the hall mark of epic games are top end graphics and pretty extreme violence

    why should they change that just to put it on the wii

    and spazmo, this is an excerpt from gamesindustry.biz, why does that mean eurogamer is going down the shitter

  • robg #6 4 years ago

    I'm really hoping for their next game the soldiers, guns and environments will all have more polygons/higher resolution textures. That's real innovation, not this gimmicky "inventiveness" and "creativity" that Wii development apparently stimulates.

  • Skywise #7 4 years ago

    A big shame, the Wii controls would absolutely rock for the shooters they make :((
    Also, they might have been one of the few 3rd parties to actually push the Wii graphically.

    I wonder if the new Wii audience would like their games though...

  • Brogan #8 4 years ago

    That's real innovation, not this gimmicky "inventiveness" and "creativity" that Wii development apparently stimulates.

    " I know instead of making the player press a button wii'll make they shake the wii-mote"

  • electrolite #9 4 years ago

    "I'm really hoping for their next game the soldiers, guns and environments will all have more polygons/higher resolution textures. That's real innovation"

    Jesus. If you're right, gaming will be dead in ten years.

  • peterfll #10 4 years ago

    If it's technical challenge they're after I would have thought the Wii would have provided the perfect medium for them to show off what Epic can do. Numerous technical folk claim the Wii still has untapped technical potential, why not take up the challenge?

    I suspect "image" has quite a lot to do with it.

  • Darren #11 4 years ago

    It doesn't surprise me that Epic don't want to support the Wii. While UE2 might run on it OK they're very much focused on UE3 and that definitely would not run on the Wii without severe compromise. I can't imagine for one second that the majority of the Wii's target audience would want to play UTIII or Gears of War and even if they did, there's a good chance that they'd own a 360 or even a PS3 anyway.

  • Paleface #12 4 years ago

    Interestingly, Eraser, I think id would be quite interested in developing for Wii - cf Carmack's work on Doom RPG and Orcs And Elves, simply to learn new platforms - but were they to do something on it, it wouldn't be idtech-engine based.

    By contrast, I think Epic are focused on one single channel, so it probably makes sense for them to stick to that channel.

    Also, I hear they had real difficulty to get textures to pop-in at incovenient enough moments on the Wii.

  • justMe #13 4 years ago

    Why optimise for a relatively limited platform when you can be lazy and rely on ever growing processor speed to do the work for you?

    True elite coders/designers don't need high end hardware to show off their skills.

  • Carlo #14 4 years ago

    "Our area of expertise is the more high-end consoles and things that push technology higher."

    Some say the wii is pushing technology higher. Just not graphical technology.

    Rein: Epic blinkers. Still if he wants to exclude his product from the majority of the world's consoles, that's up to him. Nintendo don't seem to give a flying fuck :)

  • ZeroAX #15 4 years ago

    ok i'm going to have to call bull$hit on that one cause they're biased. ofc they don't want the wii to be a success. they made so much money from the unreal 3 engine can you imagine people wanting to play games that are not made with that? they'll lose tons of money.

    heck even Valce pc gamings king (blizzard is the queen) are thinking of doing wii. why? cause they aren't biased


    EDIT : sorry i read the article somewhere else first and the author was also talking about the time they said wii is a kid's toy
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 11:14

  • Golgo #16 4 years ago

    Not our "area of expertise"?!

    So what is? The interminably crashing engines? The broken-on-release and half-patched PC versions of Gears of War and UT3?!
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 11:14

  • FooAtari #17 4 years ago

    Whats the big deal?

    Let Epic do what Epic do. There seems to be this attitude with gamers that every game has to be suitable for everyone. It doesn't.

    There are plenty games out their that take great advantage of the Wii. For every gamer that loves Super Smash Brothers there is one that loves Gears of War. While graphics are not everything there are plenty of people who like games that are nice to look at, it enhances there enjoyment, the same as for other people the new controls and creativeness the wii provides enhances their enjoyment.

    Also developers have to weigh up if its worth porting a game to the Wii. By making a drastically different console Nintendo took the risk that they would loose out on some games that might not be well suited to the Wii, or might not sell well, while also gain other new games that are.

    If everything were the same, games would get pretty dull. Nothing wrong with specialist or niche developers.
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 11:23

  • AtomicBanana #18 4 years ago

    'Some say the wii is pushing technology higher. Just not graphical technology. '

    Some others also say that waggle != technology/pushing forward. I don't see why people keep bringing this up.

  • Xerx3s #19 4 years ago

    "While UE2 might run on it OK..."

    I seriously doubt that the wii will run the UE2 decently. Frontlines runs on the UE2 and it looks well beyond wii games. These engines are not developed with wii architecture in mind.

    No, the wii needs to get it's own engines, designed from the ground up for it, I'm pretty sure that such an engine will shame most games out there. I don't think epic would be interested in such a thing though.

  • Carlo #20 4 years ago

    "waggle != technology/pushing forward"

    Are you oversimplyfying because you are oversimple? Quite how we are still getting idiots wo can only see the wii-mote and nunchuck as 'waggle only' is beyond me.

  • Dan234 #21 4 years ago

    What he means is he can't port the engine. Of course that sounds a bit naff, so he starts talking about sculptures and painters.

  • bushwod #22 4 years ago

    Obviously Epic can do what they want, but ignoring the console and handheld with the highest install base worldwide doesn't seem like smart business.

    But at least they aren't making a half assed attempt at doing Nintendo games either (I'm looking at you Atari, AITD for wii was awfull).

  • Xerx3s #23 4 years ago

    "Obviously Epic can do what they want, but ignoring the console and handheld with the highest install base worldwide doesn't seem like smart business. "

    I think money is one of epic's smallest worries atm. They are one of those few developers that can pretty much do as they please (blizzard being another).

  • HEAVYface #24 4 years ago

    to the people that think UT3 or GOW have nice graphics (over and above anything on the Wii specifically) - this is subjective in the same way gameplay or taste in music is.

    all this bloke is saying is the Wii hardware doesn't render enough polygons or specific shader effects (brown and bumpy) etc. to represent his 'house' style and hes sticking with it. fair enough. i have no doubt a version of unreal 3 or gears of war could be made on the Wii - it just wouldn't look the same.

    his painting/sculpture analogy is pure bull because at the end of the day you could do any game (gameplay wise) i've seen from ps3 or 360 on the wii.

  • Darren #25 4 years ago

    @Xerx3s - The Splinter Cell games used UE2 on the PS2 and GameCube so I am certain that the Wii can at least run that particular engine. Of course, the engine has evolved and scales to whatever hardware you're using hence the reason the Splinter Cell games always looked vastly superior on the Xbox as it has shaders and all that jazz which the PS2 and GameCube lacked.

  • Darren #26 4 years ago

    HEAVYface - "his painting/sculpture analogy is pure bull because at the end of the day you could do any game (gameplay wise) i've seen from ps3 or 360 on the wii."

    Of course, you can if you split the game over a number of loads and severely tone down the visuals. That's true of any game on any system ever bar rare exceptions. I remember when the Atari ST and Amiga came out, many of their popular games where released on the Commodore 64 and Spectrum, two previous generation computers with inferior hardware. Of course, they didn't look or play quite as well. ;)

  • spitfire1945 #27 4 years ago

    WTF is he talking about???

    "That's like asking a sculptor when he's going to start painting."

    That's a plain pathetic excuse just to cover the fact they don't have the will to do some stuff on a machine that sure doesn't have the sheer power of a 360/PS3 but kick ballz on the controls aspect....

    Besides have he ever heard of Michelangelo?? He was a painter, a sculptur and an architect... Rein must take a trip in Florence and Rome to see what Michelangelo was capable of... he might even learn something!

    He talks about graphic capabilities... well, why they don't just concentrate on the PC then, as it has far more power than the consoles.... oh, wait!!! because PC isn't profitable as console are!!! That's a poor excuse, asshole!!!

  • Carlo #28 4 years ago

    Real development teams don't bury themselves into a hole like this.

    R* Table tennis is a prime example of this. A damn fine game on all formats, and totally outside the box for R*'s normal games.

  • RyanT #29 4 years ago

    Yay for small minded developers who put all of gamings worth in visuals and forget that it's an interactive medium!

    Hooray for people who think bleeding edge technology is purely about advancing exactly the same thing everybody else has been advancing for the past 40 years!

    Hooray for lack of historical insight, context and thought about what he's said on his part, especially every other developer who complains that apparently whatever visuals are being given aren't enough!

    Hooray for lack of business sense and reduction in sales!

    Hooray!

  • HEAVYface #30 4 years ago

    the point is you would never have the same visual target if you were developing for the wii and 360. this guys only interested in normal maps and other shader effects, and thats fine.

    i don't think anybody thinks the Wii would visually be able to match the 360 version for specific effects, but you could make a visually interesting wii game using the same basic game design.

    if you take a look there are some nice looking Wii games out there.....

  • HEAVYface #31 4 years ago

    no the visual target would be platform specific, for example the 360 version would use all the hardware strengths on that platform, ditto the Wii version.

    i suppose i could draw an analogy using zelda on the gamecube. wind waker and twilight princess are obstensibly the same game but with different visual targets.

    the developer would acknowledge the strengths of each platform, because like i posted previously, gameplay wise theres nothing on 360 or ps3 the wii wouldn't be able to do. its just this guy doesn't want the bother, and like before thats fine, but all this bullshit graphical snobbery is just, well, bullshit.

  • masterdrken #32 4 years ago

    they should make a game for wii
    to show how talented they really are
    instead of polishing up games they've already done!
    and when are they going to add more colour to greys of war
    grey,brown,red and abit of green!
    should have put it on wii with them colours!

  • sneetch #33 4 years ago

    He's simply saying that Wii is not their thing, not going to branch out into Wii development because they want to stick with the more powerful consoles that let them make the games they want to make.

    As a very obvious example; GOW2 could not have been done on the Wii as it is, no amount of innovation in the controls would allow them to do the same thing.

    I really don't understand the hostility directed at this statement, he's not saying anything we don't all know (i.e. the other consoles are more powerful than the Wii and Epic have no plans to do anything with the Wii). Now if he pissed himself laughing at the idea or something or sneered at the idea, then we'd have something to bitch about. But he didn't he was, in fact, very tactful.

    As for Wii stimulating "inventiveness" and "creativity", well, I can't wait for that to start happening. So far the best use of it that I've seen is Metroid (where it mostly emulated a mouse, with occasional twisting) and Zelda (where it also emulated a mouse). Conduit is starting to look really good too (mouse :) ). Outside of the FPS though, the Wii remote is normally just a gimmick where you "shake the wii remote to do X" unless I missed something awesome. Hopefully the new Wii remote MotionPlus will change that.

    Edit: Well some of that made no sense. :)
    Edited by 1 at 17/07/08 @ 14:39