Game Informer: One of the things you announced today is that you’re bringing Unreal 3 to Xbox 360. Was this something that was always happening, or is this something new?
Mark Rein: I think it was the realization that we might be able to sell a few copies on this PS3. We had a little success on Xbox 360, and we might be able to sell a few copies there.
GI: Was this something that you guys were planning on doing from day one?
Rein: Not necessarily. One of our big concerns was the ability to bring mods to the platform, and it’s still a bit of an open issue, but we’ve had some pretty clear indications that we’ll be able to do it, and we’re pretty excited about that. That was kind of the one thing, we wanted to make sure we’d be able to bring user-created content to the platform before we made a firm commitment to it. Honestly, we view Gears of War as our showcase title for the 360, and we really view UT as our showcase title for the PS3. Now that we shipped Gears, people who are interested in licensing our technology can see we have a mature title that works, it plays really well, it sold great. We’ve always felt that UT was our poster child for PS3, you know getting UT done and up and running and running well would give us the same sort of benefits that Gears has given us on 360. So that was always our focus, and now you’ve obviously seen that we have this ability to potentially sell a lot of copies. There’s a large audience, and it just makes sense to do. I don’t think it’s anything we thought we weren’t going to do–we just want to focus on UT3 on PS3 to start.
GI: Will you launch all three SKUs on the same day?
Rein: To be honest, we don’t really have a SKU plan for it yet, so we don’t really know. I would expect us to bring out a PC demo or beta earlier on than anything else, and whether or not we can ship them all at the same time is just a question of time, and we don’t really know that yet. We have no idea what the order is—that’s more of a game-time decision, right?
GI: Do you think Sony’s in trouble?
Rein: No, god, no. Somebody asked me that earlier, and I was like, “What a ridiculous question.” People, just give them a break for crying out loud. People think it’s bad if they can’t ship enough, and then they think it’s bad if they can ship enough. It’s like, which is it? Either they can’t fulfill your order or they can, and they’re both good. Being able to fulfill your order is good news, right? Go out and buy your PS3 now. You can get one. That’s miraculous. They sold more PS3s in North America than Microsoft sold Xbox 360s in its same period of time, and they clearly aren’t going to have the shortage problems that Microsoft had. So as long as people are willing to pay the price for the machine—and I’m sure lots of people are—I think they’re hopefully in a good situation. I think they’ve done a good job with their downloadable content. There’s not a lot of games on there, but the ones that are there are really high quality, and I’m really impressed with the games. It’s a beautiful machine, it’s a great-looking piece of equipment, so I think Sony’s going to be fine.
Hopefully, they’ll have some big, hit must-have games. I mean, I was really hoping for a Gran Turismo this year. I’m a little disappointed that they’ve sort of abandoned the idea of doing Gran Turismo HD and building it out. It’s because I’m a fan, and I love that game. I’m really looking forward to Motorstorm, obviously, Resistance is a great game and I’m really enjoying it, so I don’t think that at all. I think Sony’s going to do great. People just want to say, it doesn’t matter what, people just want to say bad things. You know there were people predicting with Gears, “There’s no way it’s gonna make its release date, and Epic’s having problems and it doesn’t run well on the 360,” and all these crazy, stupid rumors. People are so negative now, it’s just turned. I’ve really noticed this over the last couple of years. It’s really turned a corner from positivity to negativity, and it’s overwhelming sometimes. It makes you want to kill yourself. It’s just crazy. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why people want to be so negative about everything. Like I said, I think there’s some really good news there and it’s a great machine, and people just want to beat them up. Same with Xbox. It doesn’t matter which one it is. Everybody’s got something negative to say these days.
GI: It’s funny that you mention that, because you said some pretty negative things about the Wii…
Rein: No, I didn’t actually. I wasn’t saying anything at all about the Wii, actually. It wasn’t a statement about the Wii itself, it was about the games that will come out for it and how people will bring games on it that are just there because of the controller, and I wasn’t exactly wrong, was I?
GI: You were actually very right.
Rein: It wasn’t a comment on the system, and I always said that Nintendo would make great games. I’m Mr. Optimism, by the way. I know people seem to think I say controversial things, but I’m very optimistic. I’m definitely a Mr. Optimism type of guy. I always said, “Nintendo will make great games.” And, sure enough, Wii Sports is frickin’ awesome. So I think they’ll do well, too. I bought Wario—it’s fun, I like the games they made for it. I really do. I don’t know if that controller works for every kind of game, though. I think that’s the one clear message of the Wii. That’s what they said all along. Rethink what you’re making for this thing, and if you do, you’ll have some great success.
GI: Will UT3 have DX10 right out of the box?
Rein: Absolutely. It’ll support DX10.
GI: What are your thoughts on Vista? Do you like it? Do you like its performance?
Rein: It’s love/hate. So, I love the feel of Vista, and I love all the cool power tools that are built right in this time. I love the way it organizes all your content for you. I love all the gaming features. I hate the fact that there’s a 32-bit version of it, and I hate the fact that there are versions that can run without Aero Glass. I think these were compromises they made for Intel, and I think those are mistakes that’ll hold the industry back. There’s no reason why every machine out there shouldn’t be 64-bit now. There’s great 64-bit processors—AMD has been shipping them for years. Intel was shipping them for years— and then, through the core processor, the original core processor into the mix and the Core Duos were 32-bit, and they shouldn’t have. And Microsoft shouldn’t have capitulated to them and said, “Oh, well Vista will support those.” They should have waited until they had the Core 2—another great processor—but full 64 bit. So, I’m a little worried that we’ll get limited support of 64 bit from the driver writers, from the application-software guys. Game guys won’t be a problem, because one of the conditions of being given the Games for Windows logo is 64-bit support. So games won’t have that problem. The question is how many game developers will exploit 64-bit and the advantages of 64-bit. It’ll be small, because the majority of systems will be 32-bit. So it’s kind of a love/hate thing. I love the OS, it’s definitely an improvement. The latest Office is a big improvement. I want 64 bit. I need more than 2 gigs of RAM. I absolutely need more RAM, and RAM is cheap now. I’m really going to hope that 64-bit is not the forgotten stepchild or relegated to workstations or what have you or just certain applications run on them. I think the way to accomplish that would have been not to do 32-bit. I’m disappointed in that.
GI: If you were going to build a rig right now, would you go with a Core 2, Core 2 Extreme and get DX10 right away or would you think someone should just wait and see how Vista pans out?
Rein: I’d go for the absolute top of the line, because that’s the kind of guy I am. (laughs)
GI: You have the money to do that, too.
Rein: No, but nonetheless, I would definitely build a Vista system. Windows XP will still be around for a long time, and obviously we’re going to be supporting XP in any products we come out with for the next couple of years. I would absolutely go for Vista, no question about that. And I’d definitely go for a graphics card with DX10 support. It would be silly not to. You want to be as future-proof as you can. That doesn’t mean you have to buy the most expensive one, you just want to find one that has support for it.
GI: Unreal has always scaled really well, from low-end hardware all the way to the high end. Where do you think the sweet spot is? What do you think it takes for a rig to be able to put Unreal through all of its paces?
Rein: We always aim Unreal for systems that people don’t have yet. (laughs) Whether its UT or any Unreal game, so I think the sweet spot has yet to show up. Again, it’s 64-bit and a ton of RAM, like an NVIDIA dual 8800s and Core 2 Extreme Quad processor—you could certainly build a super rig, but UT3 with everything turned up all the way is still going to struggle on that kind of thing. A year from now, it’ll still be a game that is a showcase game for whatever hardware you happen to be getting then. That’s normal. That’s exactly the way we’ve done it every time from the original. The format hasn’t changed there. But you’re right, we try very hard to make sure it runs well on what the average gamer has. It’ll definitely be hard to reach the bottom this time, because with UT2004, we had a software renderer, so it could run on virtually anything. We’re hoping to have that capability at some point with this series, but I don’t know for sure or when.
GI: Are you shooting for something like Shadowrun, where you can play PC versus 360? Are you shooting for that with UT3?
Rein: I don’t think we’ve made any decisions there yet. It’s something that we definitely have to get up and running and then see if it’s something that we like or not.
GI: What about supporting the achievement system for Live on PC? Are you guys supporting that?
Rein: I don’t know. It’s too early to know that.
GI: Any thoughts on bringing Gears over to PC, or are you going to keep it an exclusive on 360?
Rein: We’ve always said that at some point, Gears would come to PC, or could come to PC. We demoed it. The first year at E3 we demoed it, it was on a PC. It’s not a question of if it can run, it’s a question of when’s the right time, and when do we have the right people to do it and is it the right platform for it? So there’s no final decision on that yet. Right now, it’s an Xbox 360 exclusive. If you want to play Gears, go buy a 360.
GI: Congratulations on your success with Gears. You received many nominations for the AIAS awards. Is the Gears team on vacation, or are they thinking about Gears 2?
Rein: No, they’re still working on Gears. You saw that we put one update out, and we’ve got another one coming out another any day now—I’m not exactly sure when. We have another update in the works with a little surprise in it, and we have more downloadable content. We’re still working on making Gears a better game. You’ll have to wait and see what comes from that.
GI: Do you look at Halo 3 as a complementary franchise or something that you’re competing against?
Rein: We’re a long way from Halo 3 still, so it’s not like we’re releasing them in the same week. They’re both complementary. I mean if Gears helps build the audience for Halo 3, then I hope Halo 3 helps build the audience for Gears. I think a lot of the Halo 3 publicity they did right around the time Gears shipped probably helped convince those stragglers or fence-sitters that, “Oh, there’s Gears of War now, and Lost Planet is coming, and Mass Effect and Halo 3…” I think a rising tide helps rises all the boats. I think, hopefully, Gears of War is just different enough from Halo 3 that if you bought a 360 because you’re a Halo fan you’ll also buy Gears because, “Wow, everybody says it’s great and I want to give it a try and it’s different.” Likewise, I’m sure everybody’s the same with Halo 3. They have a huge built-in audience, and I think that helps everybody on Xbox 360, because people know it’s coming, they’re starting to see little bits of it, the TV commercial was cool. So absolutely, I think Halo 3 really helps everybody on Xbox 360, not just us. I think everybody. It’s just one of those things that you know is coming, the same way Gran Turismo is on PlayStation 3. It’s a classic, you gotta have it, it’s a gotta-buy thing. If that helps you make a decision to buy Gears early or wait until later, we’re happy about that.
GI: When do you think we’ll hear something about your next Make Something Unreal contest?
Rein: I hope not too long from now. You know, that’s typically something we organize after the game is out, which is always a moving target for us. We definitely hope to do another contest. There’s no question about that. It was very successful, and we got some great mods and NVIDIA was a fantastic partner. There will be another one, I just don’t know when we’ll be able to announce it.
GI: Last question: What are you playing now?
Rein: Gears of War, baby. And UT3, because I can. (laughs)
Mark Rein: I think it was the realization that we might be able to sell a few copies on this PS3. We had a little success on Xbox 360, and we might be able to sell a few copies there.
GI: Was this something that you guys were planning on doing from day one?
Rein: Not necessarily. One of our big concerns was the ability to bring mods to the platform, and it’s still a bit of an open issue, but we’ve had some pretty clear indications that we’ll be able to do it, and we’re pretty excited about that. That was kind of the one thing, we wanted to make sure we’d be able to bring user-created content to the platform before we made a firm commitment to it. Honestly, we view Gears of War as our showcase title for the 360, and we really view UT as our showcase title for the PS3. Now that we shipped Gears, people who are interested in licensing our technology can see we have a mature title that works, it plays really well, it sold great. We’ve always felt that UT was our poster child for PS3, you know getting UT done and up and running and running well would give us the same sort of benefits that Gears has given us on 360. So that was always our focus, and now you’ve obviously seen that we have this ability to potentially sell a lot of copies. There’s a large audience, and it just makes sense to do. I don’t think it’s anything we thought we weren’t going to do–we just want to focus on UT3 on PS3 to start.
Rein: To be honest, we don’t really have a SKU plan for it yet, so we don’t really know. I would expect us to bring out a PC demo or beta earlier on than anything else, and whether or not we can ship them all at the same time is just a question of time, and we don’t really know that yet. We have no idea what the order is—that’s more of a game-time decision, right?
GI: Do you think Sony’s in trouble?
Rein: No, god, no. Somebody asked me that earlier, and I was like, “What a ridiculous question.” People, just give them a break for crying out loud. People think it’s bad if they can’t ship enough, and then they think it’s bad if they can ship enough. It’s like, which is it? Either they can’t fulfill your order or they can, and they’re both good. Being able to fulfill your order is good news, right? Go out and buy your PS3 now. You can get one. That’s miraculous. They sold more PS3s in North America than Microsoft sold Xbox 360s in its same period of time, and they clearly aren’t going to have the shortage problems that Microsoft had. So as long as people are willing to pay the price for the machine—and I’m sure lots of people are—I think they’re hopefully in a good situation. I think they’ve done a good job with their downloadable content. There’s not a lot of games on there, but the ones that are there are really high quality, and I’m really impressed with the games. It’s a beautiful machine, it’s a great-looking piece of equipment, so I think Sony’s going to be fine.
Hopefully, they’ll have some big, hit must-have games. I mean, I was really hoping for a Gran Turismo this year. I’m a little disappointed that they’ve sort of abandoned the idea of doing Gran Turismo HD and building it out. It’s because I’m a fan, and I love that game. I’m really looking forward to Motorstorm, obviously, Resistance is a great game and I’m really enjoying it, so I don’t think that at all. I think Sony’s going to do great. People just want to say, it doesn’t matter what, people just want to say bad things. You know there were people predicting with Gears, “There’s no way it’s gonna make its release date, and Epic’s having problems and it doesn’t run well on the 360,” and all these crazy, stupid rumors. People are so negative now, it’s just turned. I’ve really noticed this over the last couple of years. It’s really turned a corner from positivity to negativity, and it’s overwhelming sometimes. It makes you want to kill yourself. It’s just crazy. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why people want to be so negative about everything. Like I said, I think there’s some really good news there and it’s a great machine, and people just want to beat them up. Same with Xbox. It doesn’t matter which one it is. Everybody’s got something negative to say these days.
GI: It’s funny that you mention that, because you said some pretty negative things about the Wii…
Rein: No, I didn’t actually. I wasn’t saying anything at all about the Wii, actually. It wasn’t a statement about the Wii itself, it was about the games that will come out for it and how people will bring games on it that are just there because of the controller, and I wasn’t exactly wrong, was I?
GI: You were actually very right.
Rein: It wasn’t a comment on the system, and I always said that Nintendo would make great games. I’m Mr. Optimism, by the way. I know people seem to think I say controversial things, but I’m very optimistic. I’m definitely a Mr. Optimism type of guy. I always said, “Nintendo will make great games.” And, sure enough, Wii Sports is frickin’ awesome. So I think they’ll do well, too. I bought Wario—it’s fun, I like the games they made for it. I really do. I don’t know if that controller works for every kind of game, though. I think that’s the one clear message of the Wii. That’s what they said all along. Rethink what you’re making for this thing, and if you do, you’ll have some great success.
GI: Will UT3 have DX10 right out of the box?
Rein: Absolutely. It’ll support DX10.
GI: What are your thoughts on Vista? Do you like it? Do you like its performance?
Rein: It’s love/hate. So, I love the feel of Vista, and I love all the cool power tools that are built right in this time. I love the way it organizes all your content for you. I love all the gaming features. I hate the fact that there’s a 32-bit version of it, and I hate the fact that there are versions that can run without Aero Glass. I think these were compromises they made for Intel, and I think those are mistakes that’ll hold the industry back. There’s no reason why every machine out there shouldn’t be 64-bit now. There’s great 64-bit processors—AMD has been shipping them for years. Intel was shipping them for years— and then, through the core processor, the original core processor into the mix and the Core Duos were 32-bit, and they shouldn’t have. And Microsoft shouldn’t have capitulated to them and said, “Oh, well Vista will support those.” They should have waited until they had the Core 2—another great processor—but full 64 bit. So, I’m a little worried that we’ll get limited support of 64 bit from the driver writers, from the application-software guys. Game guys won’t be a problem, because one of the conditions of being given the Games for Windows logo is 64-bit support. So games won’t have that problem. The question is how many game developers will exploit 64-bit and the advantages of 64-bit. It’ll be small, because the majority of systems will be 32-bit. So it’s kind of a love/hate thing. I love the OS, it’s definitely an improvement. The latest Office is a big improvement. I want 64 bit. I need more than 2 gigs of RAM. I absolutely need more RAM, and RAM is cheap now. I’m really going to hope that 64-bit is not the forgotten stepchild or relegated to workstations or what have you or just certain applications run on them. I think the way to accomplish that would have been not to do 32-bit. I’m disappointed in that.
GI: If you were going to build a rig right now, would you go with a Core 2, Core 2 Extreme and get DX10 right away or would you think someone should just wait and see how Vista pans out?
Rein: I’d go for the absolute top of the line, because that’s the kind of guy I am. (laughs)
GI: You have the money to do that, too.
Rein: No, but nonetheless, I would definitely build a Vista system. Windows XP will still be around for a long time, and obviously we’re going to be supporting XP in any products we come out with for the next couple of years. I would absolutely go for Vista, no question about that. And I’d definitely go for a graphics card with DX10 support. It would be silly not to. You want to be as future-proof as you can. That doesn’t mean you have to buy the most expensive one, you just want to find one that has support for it.
GI: Unreal has always scaled really well, from low-end hardware all the way to the high end. Where do you think the sweet spot is? What do you think it takes for a rig to be able to put Unreal through all of its paces?
Rein: We always aim Unreal for systems that people don’t have yet. (laughs) Whether its UT or any Unreal game, so I think the sweet spot has yet to show up. Again, it’s 64-bit and a ton of RAM, like an NVIDIA dual 8800s and Core 2 Extreme Quad processor—you could certainly build a super rig, but UT3 with everything turned up all the way is still going to struggle on that kind of thing. A year from now, it’ll still be a game that is a showcase game for whatever hardware you happen to be getting then. That’s normal. That’s exactly the way we’ve done it every time from the original. The format hasn’t changed there. But you’re right, we try very hard to make sure it runs well on what the average gamer has. It’ll definitely be hard to reach the bottom this time, because with UT2004, we had a software renderer, so it could run on virtually anything. We’re hoping to have that capability at some point with this series, but I don’t know for sure or when.
GI: Are you shooting for something like Shadowrun, where you can play PC versus 360? Are you shooting for that with UT3?
Rein: I don’t think we’ve made any decisions there yet. It’s something that we definitely have to get up and running and then see if it’s something that we like or not.
GI: What about supporting the achievement system for Live on PC? Are you guys supporting that?
Rein: I don’t know. It’s too early to know that.
GI: Any thoughts on bringing Gears over to PC, or are you going to keep it an exclusive on 360?
Rein: We’ve always said that at some point, Gears would come to PC, or could come to PC. We demoed it. The first year at E3 we demoed it, it was on a PC. It’s not a question of if it can run, it’s a question of when’s the right time, and when do we have the right people to do it and is it the right platform for it? So there’s no final decision on that yet. Right now, it’s an Xbox 360 exclusive. If you want to play Gears, go buy a 360.
GI: Congratulations on your success with Gears. You received many nominations for the AIAS awards. Is the Gears team on vacation, or are they thinking about Gears 2?
Rein: No, they’re still working on Gears. You saw that we put one update out, and we’ve got another one coming out another any day now—I’m not exactly sure when. We have another update in the works with a little surprise in it, and we have more downloadable content. We’re still working on making Gears a better game. You’ll have to wait and see what comes from that.
GI: Do you look at Halo 3 as a complementary franchise or something that you’re competing against?
Rein: We’re a long way from Halo 3 still, so it’s not like we’re releasing them in the same week. They’re both complementary. I mean if Gears helps build the audience for Halo 3, then I hope Halo 3 helps build the audience for Gears. I think a lot of the Halo 3 publicity they did right around the time Gears shipped probably helped convince those stragglers or fence-sitters that, “Oh, there’s Gears of War now, and Lost Planet is coming, and Mass Effect and Halo 3…” I think a rising tide helps rises all the boats. I think, hopefully, Gears of War is just different enough from Halo 3 that if you bought a 360 because you’re a Halo fan you’ll also buy Gears because, “Wow, everybody says it’s great and I want to give it a try and it’s different.” Likewise, I’m sure everybody’s the same with Halo 3. They have a huge built-in audience, and I think that helps everybody on Xbox 360, because people know it’s coming, they’re starting to see little bits of it, the TV commercial was cool. So absolutely, I think Halo 3 really helps everybody on Xbox 360, not just us. I think everybody. It’s just one of those things that you know is coming, the same way Gran Turismo is on PlayStation 3. It’s a classic, you gotta have it, it’s a gotta-buy thing. If that helps you make a decision to buy Gears early or wait until later, we’re happy about that.
GI: When do you think we’ll hear something about your next Make Something Unreal contest?
Rein: I hope not too long from now. You know, that’s typically something we organize after the game is out, which is always a moving target for us. We definitely hope to do another contest. There’s no question about that. It was very successful, and we got some great mods and NVIDIA was a fantastic partner. There will be another one, I just don’t know when we’ll be able to announce it.
GI: Last question: What are you playing now?
Rein: Gears of War, baby. And UT3, because I can. (laughs)
