UT3 PC special edition unveiled

By Robert Purchese Published 27 September, 2007

Hours of mod tutorials.

Midway America has shown of the contents of the Unreal Tournament 3 collector's edition on PC.

Inside the fancy tin will be a hard cover art book covering concept drawings for vehicles, characters, weapons and environments. There will also be a bonus DVD featuring the history of Unreal Tournament, behind the scenes footage, and over 10 hours of toolkit tutorials to help you build your mods.

The package will go on sale for USD 59.95, and will be available in Europe, South Africa, Russia and "most other territories". Midway Europe has yet to get back to us about a price.

Yesterday Epic Games confirmed that PC and PS3 owners of the game wouldn't be able to play together at launch. Lengthy console certification processes were to blame, and the developer wasn't prepared to hold back content from its PC user base in order to deliver it to the PS3 crowd at the same time.

Unreal Tournament 3 will be released in November on PS3 and PC, followed by a 360 version next year.

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 (29) Latest comment 4 years ago

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

  • JonFE #1 4 years ago

    After the Halo 3 Limited packaging fiasco, I'd be rather skeptical about other tin editions...





    Bah, who am I kidding, I'm a collectors' edition whore. Bring it on!

  • Moz #2 4 years ago

    Anyone know if your still going to be able to play user made maps on the PS3 version?

  • asphaltcowboy #3 4 years ago

    OOoh, looks like this, Quake Wars and the Orange Box are gonna get me back into PC gaming in a big way!

  • Skeletor #4 4 years ago

    @Moz
    Yes, you're going to be able to do that but keep in mind that doesn't mean that every map created on the PC will be playable on the PS3 due to RAM restrictions on the console.

  • themerlin13 #5 4 years ago

    The 360 version is later as I understand it because for some reason the engine is not suited to the 360? which sounds BS to me?

    PC game all the way. Nice idea to use the vids to help you level build :)
    Edited by 1 at 27/09/07 @ 17:17

  • zuljin #6 4 years ago

    What I really want to know is, are the tools going to be freely available as download? Could you for instance make a map, put it on mem stick then run it on ps3 provided it isn't too large?

    If so that'd be awesome.

    @NickM40A3
    Why put it on 360 before Wii?
    Edited by 1 at 27/09/07 @ 17:23

  • skillian #7 4 years ago

    Why put it on PS3 before 360?, 360 has a bigger instal base and the game would have sold more on the 360.

    Just stupid

    I agree. In fact, let's just get rid of all the other systems and only make 360 games.

  • Danoxth #8 4 years ago

    Modding tools! Been wanting to get back into modding for so long now (I say get back, i've never really started) and have been waiting for this game to do so, I do enjoy UnrealED.

    November, not long to go then.

  • skillian #9 4 years ago

    What I really want to know is, are the tools going to be freely available as download? Could you for instance make a map, put it on mem stick then run it on ps3 provided it isn't too large?

    Well, Unreal Editor comes with the PC game, dunno about the PS3 version. But yes basically it's free, and you can make your map (or download someone else's) for free and play it on your PS3.

  • zuljin #10 4 years ago

    @skillian
    Awesome - o

    I was under the impression mods / maps would have had to go via PSN store (free or not), but I was hoping I was wrong!

  • sharpfish #11 4 years ago

    @thermilin > the UE3 engine has already been used many times on the 360 (Gears of war, Bioshock, Vegas etc) it's perfectly suited to the 360, it's the PS3 it's reported to have had trouble with... so i'm glad to see you think it's BS which it is.

    It's on PS3 for money reasons nothing more. Both consoles can handle it (in cut down fashions).

    PC version for me, and this is the only game I will be buying the collectors edition for, i've been an unreal fanboy since 1998! :)

  • ZeroAX #12 4 years ago

    i think a standard dvd doesn't have enough space for it. pcs have the imba hard drives and ps3 has the crap-ray but that is still better than standard dvds

  • CargoCult #13 4 years ago

    Only sick deviant perverts like UnrealEd!

    ...

    (Is it still as awful as it used to be? I quite like being able to create something other than basic cuboids out of brush geometry. Yes, static props are the 'future', but they can't do everything!)

  • zuljin #14 4 years ago

    Aai, I thought Quakeworld was the way to go...

  • Slamhound #15 4 years ago

    If it contains a model of a Flak Cannon, I am so there. Even though I know my rig wouldn't be able to run it.

  • crozon #16 4 years ago

    "I agree. In fact, let's just get rid of all the other systems and only make 360 games. "

    I sort of agree, get rid of the other systems and make games only for the PC :).........."i have had a long day, so got the right to be cheeky"

  • projectmayhem #17 4 years ago

    pre-booking this on the basis of having tutorials that aren't written by a 12 year old.

    dying for some UT action. all the "new" shooters are so slow. good, but slow.

  • Pablo2k5 #18 4 years ago

    Quote "the developer wasn't prepared to hold back content from its PC user base in order to deliver it to the PS3 crowd"

    WOW. You don't hear that kind of thing much these days.

  • dfunked #19 4 years ago

    Meh, I preordered the standard edition for £17.99 a year ago, think I'll stick with that bargain instead of buying another unnecessary limited/special/big shiny tin edition

  • Xerx3s #20 4 years ago

    Too bad that it's only a shadow of UT'99 eh?

  • L0cky #21 4 years ago

    'Only sick deviant perverts like UnrealEd!'

    It's a pretty good editor. If your experience of it is from UT or Unreal then yeah, it had a lot of problems back then; but now it's a lot better. Name another game engine editor that's better than UnrealEd, because it certainly isn't QRadiant or Hammer (Worldcraft).

    Worldcraft used to rock back in the Q2 days but bsp editing isn't as important as it used to be.

    'Too bad that it's only a shadow of UT'99 eh?'

    You've played it? Give us the scoop!

  • DodgyPast #22 4 years ago

    Epic's goal of getting PC and PS3 players playing together is quite a big reason for the two being released together.

    I suspect that'll happen about 4 months after the release when the code has stabilised.

  • cathalzx #23 4 years ago

    Why put it on PS3 before 360?, 360 has a bigger instal base and the game would have sold more on the 360.

    The reason has been quoted as being an issue with the modpacks and XBox Live - Microsoft are notorious when it comes to certification, and Epic claim they are spending the additional time coming up with a way to add the user-content in Microsoft-certified packs for Live.

    I'm sure Sony threw em a few quid along with it, or maybe Epic just want to give PS3 owners a "Gears-like" experience on their console....by that I mean - "Oh my god, this looks better than anything I've ever seen......wow"

  • Caimbeul #24 4 years ago

    i never buy special editions on the basis that the stuff you get with it is usually discarded instantly and nver actually used and is therefore a huge waste of resources. Save the planet!

    HOWEVER! the fact that this has mod tutorials by the devs themselves is a very noteworthy extra and should be praised! - more PC games should feture this. I for one will be getting the spec edition too!

  • Ghettomurph #25 4 years ago

    Its coming out on 360 next year simply because of licensing. Sony have obviously paid top dollar to have a timed exclusive because theyve dropped the ball this generation. Plus, they can then shout "UT3 & Haze are PS3 exclusives!!!.........for about a month"

    To say the 360 cant handle the engine when its Unreal Engine 3 (Gears, Rainbow Six, Bioshock, Mass Effect etc. etc.) is bollocks. The only thing thats going to be a problem is player made mods and whether this can be done with the 360 coz of Microsoft being complete bellends in some regards.

    Regarding the topic about the collectors edition, is this really going to be available over here in the UK? They said the same about the collectors edition of UT2K4 and that never appeared over here.

  • Xerx3s #26 4 years ago

    You've played it? Give us the scoop!

    By the look of all released material and the sound of the comments made by epic, it is clearly visible that epic hasn't learned at all what made Ut'99 so good and all other incarnations so shit. Also, GoW has to be the most poorly equipped MP game I have seen in a very long time (even though it was fun for a while), which doesn't bode well.

    I will be very surprised if it is even half as good as the original.

  • Skeletor #27 4 years ago

    Halo 3 is the ONLY REASON why UT3 comes to PS3 first!
    It would be absolutely stupid to have these two giant FPS franchises on the same platform at the same time. Especially considering that both games are targeting the exact same customer base.
    I can't believe so many people don't realise this...

  • fat_agnus #28 4 years ago

    There was a lot of talk about the Cell SPU being useless for games
    since the SPU could only do floating point math. Tim Sweeney (lead
    programmer for the UT engine) said in an interview that the UT engine
    uses the SPU to do collision detection and other computational
    expensive operations.

    So it could be that UT3 will be the first game that actually start to
    show how the SPU:s should be used in a game and that the 360 version
    will arrive later because Epic needs to do scale down the game more in
    order to make it run on the 360.

    And before you start flaming me: I do not know this for a fact, I'm
    just making more or less educated guess.

  • Skeletor #29 4 years ago

    @fat_agnus
    Flaming you? Me?! ;-)
    The info about the SPU usage is certainly interesting though I really don't know whether this is good or bad news for the PS3 owners. Could take quite a while until more designers and programmers start using the full potential.
    Anyway, Crytek's big chief (forgot the name...) said once in an interview that RAM is the true problem when it comes to porting PC FPS to consoles. Considering that the 360 is considerably better "stacked" when it comes to main memory while having the UT3 engine already up and running on several titles I find it less likely that scaling back would take so much time.
    However, they will have more time with the 360 version so at the end, I expect it to be the better of the two console versions. There's also the bonus of having way more players for online matches due to the fact that XBL is simply bigger. Just my guesses...
    Edited by 1 at 29/09/07 @ 20:50