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Epic Games doesn’t intend “to bring Unreal Engine 4 to Wii U,” the firm’s vice-president Mark Rein has stated, but the engine could run on Nintendo’s upcoming console “if a customer decides they want to port an Unreal Engine 4 game” to the hardware.
“We have Unreal Engine 3 running on Wii U,” Rein told VideoGamer at Develop yesterday.
“You saw games at the Nintendo press conference again this year – a fantastic demo by our friends at Warner Bros. showing Arkham City running on Wii U. And Aliens: Colonial Marines is coming on Wii U, that’s also Unreal. There’s, I’m sure, several others. Mass Effect was announced for it as well. So we’re certainly playing a role there with Unreal Engine 3.
“I’ll state that I don’t think it’s our intention to bring Unreal Engine 4 to Wii U, but Unreal Engine 4 is going to be supremely scalable.
“We’ll run on mobile phones and on a wide variety of things, so if a customer decides they want to port an Unreal Engine 4 game to Wii U, they could. But Unreal Engine 3 is a really good fit for that platform.”
Epic Games’ senior PR manager Dana Cowley added that, “beyond the PC, we haven’t confirmed any other platforms for Unreal Engine 4.”
Confusion over Wii U’s ability to render games using Unreal Engine 4 struck when GameTrailers TV host Geoff Keighley quoted Epic’s Mike Capps as saying “Wii-U will be Unreal Engine 3”.
Epic later clarified that it hadn’t declared its strategy on Wii U.
Rein’s comments yesterday, however, appear to suggest that Epic will not be directly supporting Wii U with Unreal Engine 4.
In the same interview, Rein said that he would “rather [wait for] a massive leap in performance and capabilities” from next-generation consoles “than get something today.”
