Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Epic Games reveals Android plans

Epic Games reveals Android plans

Epic GamesInfinity Blade and Gears of War developer Epic Games has revealed where Android fits into its future development plans in a recent interview.

Gaming site Slowdown.vg sat down with Jay Wilbur, Epic's Vice President, for an interview focused on the developer's mobile and middleware efforts. As well as reflecting on Epic's success with Infinity Blade on iOS, Wilbur is quizzed on the studio's future plans for the Android platform.

Interviewer: The iPhone is great, but I’m an Android kind of guy. [Waves around the Nexus One phone being used to record the interview] Will we ever get to play UE3 games?

Wilbur: [Takes out a Galaxy S, shows Epic Citadel running on it] We’ve done some development on Android. That’s Epic Citadel running on Android – now, this is not for public release. It’s on iOS first, and then once the iOS version is released then we’ll start considering Android.

Wilbur also comments on the challenges Epic faced in getting their Unreal Engine running on Android, including the dreaded f-word: fragmentation.

Wilbur: One of the problems with the Android marketplace is hardware fragmentation, that’s a really big issue. The other thing is marketplace fragmentation, there are so many different appstores out there. The Android marketplace is a little more difficult [to develop for] because there is less control. I think the Android marketplace is robust … I find it very easy to buy things on it, it’s just that Apple has very tight control. So anything in the Apple world is perfect. It’s just perfect. We like that, we like that a lot. We know that it’s just gonna work. Sometimes that’s not always the case in the Android marketplace.

It's great to see a big-name developer like Epic Games taking an active interest in Android, though based on Wilbur's comments, it looks like there are still a few issues to be ironed out. [Slowdown.vg]

Epic Games reveals Android plans posted originally by Android Central

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