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Unreal Tournament 3

Mark Rein on the 360 version.

EurogamerAre you done with UT3 now, or will there be more downloadable stuff coming?
Mark Rein

We're never done. You look at what we've done in the past with UT...one could jump to the conclusion that there's more coming and obviously now we've started the million-dollar Intel Make Something Unreal contest, there's going to be a ton of great content coming to this game, and we want to capitalise on that content and share it around all the platforms if we can.

EurogamerTalking of Unreal, it's, what, more than five years since Unreal 2. Are you ever going to make a follow-up to that? Is there any possibility?
Mark Rein

I'm sure that at some point in our future we will make another Unreal, single-player, story-driven game. I'm sure at some point there will be one. There are no plans to do one today.

EurogamerWhy haven't you chosen to do a follow-up to Unreal 2 to date?
Mark Rein

I think we've been really happy with the multiplayer-oriented Unreal Tournament. Despite what people feel, people get this crazy idea that if you don't sell five million units it isn't a success, but we heard today that we've shipped over 1.2 million units of UT3, not even including the Xbox 360 yet. We make good money on Unreal Tournament, and it's a good game that we love to make, and it's not a five-year-long production and it's a great test-bed for lots of cool things that we want to do. We like making this type of game, and we have Gears of War as our kind of vanguard, single-player graphic showcase type of game.

EurogamerYou've got your hands full there.
Mark Rein

And we're coming up with ideas for new intellectual properties.

EurogamerAnnouncing this year?
Mark Rein

No, no...ways off! We learned a lot from creating Unreal and Gears of War, there are lessons to be learned.

EurogamerWill you stick to your guns, as it were, and keep making shooters? It's proven that the Unreal Engine 3 can handle pretty much any genre you throw at it.
Mark Rein

Haha, stuck to our guns, that's great. Well, there's lots of low-hanging fruit in shooters. We can still do better, we can constantly improve.

"Bio Rifle" is what I like to call my [manners - Ed].
EurogamerYou must play lots of other types of games.
Mark Rein

Is Spielberg bored of making action movies?

EurogamerNo, but even he does his little arty projects now and again. [What, like Schindler's List? - Ed] Don't you feel like doing something completely unrelated to what you've done before?
Mark Rein

We will, I just don't know when. We just feel like we can do a better job at these. People are seeing with Unreal Tournament 3, and will especially see with Gears of War 2 that we're getting better and better every time. We think we can do better!

EurogamerHave you officially retired the Unreal Championship games now that the current crop of consoles can do Unreal Tournament properly?
Mark Rein

Yeah...that's a good question for Mike [Capps - Ed], I mean he designed those games. I think the guys would love to make another Unreal Championship, but there's only so many things you can do in a year.

Unreal Tournament 3 will be released on Xbox 360 in the Summer and will be published by Midway.