Epic’s Mark Rein is an outspoken chappy, but since E3 and the increase support from Sony (when they announced Unreal Tournament III would be exclusive to PS3 until 2008) he’s come out with some crackers.
The most recent one: the Xbox 360 version of UT III will have to be cut down to cope with the limitations of the console’s hardware, specifically the lack of a hard drive in some machines (the Core model) and the often mentioned small disk space offered by DVD.
When asked at this year’s Edinburgh Interactive Festival whether disk size would be a problem on the 360, he said “we’ll compress some things. But you know, we may have fewer maps on the 360 version… Blu-Ray has definitely given us a lot of legroom… If you think down the road, well maybe the next UT beyond this one, on Blu-Ray disc, we might fill the whole damn disc with all the cool stuff the mod makers make.”
Which is great news – we could very well see a Collector’s Edition of UT III with all the mods built in – you’ll remember the PS3 version will support PC-style mods. Looks like Sony’s decision to include Blu-Ray will pay off in the long run.