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[Updated] Mark Rein Clarifies Epic's Position On Android
[Update]
There was a bit of confusion today, when some stories surfaced with quotes about Epic's plans for Unreal Engine and Infinity Blade on Android that seemed to contradict each other. We just got off the phone with Epic's Mark Rein, who was kind enough to give us a brief interview regarding the company's position and plans on Android. After all the confusion today, we will let this transcript of the call stand as the final word.
There have been some conflicting stories about Unreal and Android online today, we just wanted you to clarify Epic's position on Android.
Well, we've been supporting Android with Unreal Engine 3. A couple of games have already shipped – Dungeon Defenders by Trendy Entertainment was the first game actually certified for Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android. It ships pre-installed on the Motorola Zoom. It's also available in the Android Market. We also have Monster Madness from Southpeak, which is also available for tablet and phone. We have a lot more licensees that are building games for Android, including GameLoft, which is the leading dedicated mobile game company. We're excited about that. We did the Gizmodo article and I think there was some confusion. We were talking specifically about Infinity Blade, when we said that we didn't know when we'd bring Infinity Blade to Android. But we haven't ruled it out; we just haven't done it yet.
What are some of the challenges for you in bringing games to Android?
The biggest challenge, which Google announced at GDC that they are going to solve, they just haven't put a date on it, is the file size in Android Market. To sell a game larger than 50MB, you have to sell the customer a "stub" of the game and then download the content from your own server once the game is installed. With a game like Infinity Blade, which is 850MB and will probably get larger as we add more features, including multiplayer, would be prohibitively expensive for a company like ours. Like we said in the Gizmodo article, there are a lot of other issues around Android that need to be solved. They are solveable issues, and I think Google is working hard to solve them.
Do you have plans to release the Android Unreal Development Kit in the future?
Unreal 3 Engine on Android has been available to our licensees for quite some time. We don't have a specific timetable to have an Android version of Unreal Development Kit yet, but we have said it will come eventually.
[Original Story]
Epic got a version of its Unreal Engine working on iPhone last year, but it seems that Android powered mobile devices will be left out in the cold...or maybe not. We're getting confincting reports about whether or not Epic's Unreal Engine will get a proper release on Android devices.
Epic’s Unreal iOS was used to power Chair Entertainment’s gorgeous Infinity Blade last year, and maybe Android users would, undoubtedly, like to check out the title for themselves. Epic founder Tim Sweeney doesn't seem to think that will happen. The wide diversity of hardware specifications across a range of varying handsets, which use Android, has prevented Epic from moving its software over to Google’s OS. Sweeney recently told Gizmodo, “When a consumer gets the phone and they want to play a game that uses our technology, it’s got to be a consistent experience, and we can’t guarantee that. That’s what held us off Android.”
On the other hand, Epic's Vice President, Mark Rein, recently spoke with Gamasutra where he said, "We've been supporting [Android] for quite a while, and we've been providing [Unreal Engine 3] in source code format to our licensees.” While developers can currently license Unreal technology to help build a game for Android, the difference is that Epic has not provided developers with any development kits that would make the process exponentially easier. "UDK [Unreal Development Kit] will come eventually to Android,” added Rein, “and Google is going to solve that problem – we know they're working on it, but we don't know the release date and we don't know when it will get into the hands of all the different vendors with all the different phones."
We’ve reached out to Epic for clarification.
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