Interviews// Mark Rein, Epic Games VP

SPOnG: On the engine front, you guys have had some trouble with Silicon Knights. How's that going?

Mark Rein: (Shrugs).


SPOnG: Fair enough. It doesn't seem to have hurt your business at all. Seems like every other day there's another Unreal Engine 3 announcement...

Mark Rein: That's not for me to talk about.


SPOnG: How about the Xbox 360 version of Unreal Tournament III? (Launched today, July 4th in the UK and July 7th in the USA).

Mark Rein: It's really good! (Looks pleased). I'm always fighting to get our games released at the same time in multiple territories and not delay it for any set of users. We have a huge fan base over here for (it). It's probably now bigger than it is in the US and we're always trying to get them as fair a shake as we can. When they told me it could get here a few days earlier, I was like 'yes!' It's pretty fantastic.

The game's really good. It's fast and smooth, and we now even have enough extra performance to put in split screen. It's nice, I think the fans will be really impressed by it and it's coming with a lot more stuff than was in the original game.

A lot of the content we released as downloadable content, bonus content for the PS3 and PC versions is in there, plus all the new stuff we did specifically for this game. So, we're pretty psyched about it.


SPOnG: Was the extra content compensation for 360 owners for having to wait?

Mark Rein: For that, and for not having mods... (laughs)


SPOnG: There is that. How are the two console versions comparing now?

Mark Rein: I think they're both great. The PlayStation 3 version has mods, which means lots of awesome replayability, but the Xbox version has Xbox Live, which is the king of online, as far as I'm concerned – of how to play console games online. Xbox Live is just such a superb system that... I think we'll see our largest player counts on that platform, because, you know, it just works so well.

I'm glad Sony's going to have an in-game XMB. I think they're on the road to being what Xbox Live is now. But, certainly, Xbox Live is just such a great environment to play games with, it works so well. I think people will find it's a great game to play online.


SPOnG: The flipside I've heard is that with Xbox Live you get this really great structure to work with, but with PSN you get more freedom to decide how you're going to do it.

Mark Rein: Yeah. Horses for courses, I guess. As the Brits say. I'm obviously a big fan of Xbox Live. It's been very good to us, so... (laughs).


SPOnG: Speaking of Epic and Xbox Live, I know it's not strictly your game, but how's Gears 2 coming along?

Mark Rein: (Grins) It's my game, baby! It's not mine personally, but, my company's game... Oh, it's really really good. Very excited about that.