Mark Rein: Home integration in UT3

Epic Games VP Mark Rein has revealed some of Epic’s plans for PlayStation Home integration in Unreal Tournament 3 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC) in a recent interview with Gamasutra. Unreal Tournament 3 has been confirmed for a December launch for the PlayStation 3, while Home is being readied for a 2008 launch. Read all about it at the full article.

Epic Games VP Mark Rein has revealed some of Epic’s plans for PlayStation Home integration in Unreal Tournament 3 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC) in a recent interview with Gamasutra. Unreal Tournament 3 has been confirmed for a December launch for the PlayStation 3, while Home is being readied for a 2008 launch.

According to Rein, Epic already has concrete plans for Home integration. If everything goes according to plan, players will apparently be able to “get a party together in Home and then file into the game from an Unreal space.”

Home frees Epic from having to build its own party system, and while Rein admits that it won’t be as detailed as a real party system, it will still let players form up and play the game together. Here’s more from Rein:

I think it’s really smart that eventually if everybody does that, each company doesn’t have to develop its own way to all meet up somewhere and all go into a game. I think that’s a very smart way to do it, and I kind of wish Xbox 360 would do that, and I’m hoping that they will at some point.

Rein also threw in his own two cents about the PlayStation 3’s integrated Blu-ray player:

I think there’s nothing wrong with the Trojan Horse strategy of “let’s get this device in the living room, and it can play music and DVDs and high-definition movies.” The Xbox 360 does that too … [T]here’s nothing better for us as game developers than having a huge install base. Publishers will say, “Hey, there’s ten or however many million of those. Let’s spend a little bit extra to buy our disc and stick it in.”

Via Gamasutra