pic's Vice President talks about everything UT3, including what rig you'll need to rock it, Windows Vista, DX10 support and all of the next-gen consoles.

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: 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.