Next-Gen Call Of Duty To Be Powered By Unreal Engine 4 And Shown On Xbox 720?

A massive article over at Videogamers is shedding light on the plans Epic Games might have for Unreal Engine 4, and the plans firms like Microsoft and Activision might have for the aforementioned engine. The full article’s here. Excerpts are below.

The Exclusive

“Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Microsoft are behind the [Unreal Engine 4] NDA; what might they be paying for? Firstly, that the Unreal 4 demo is based on a Microsoft exclusive – either turning Samaritan into a full game (which Epic has never done before) or it’s Gear of Wars 4 – and they want to announce it alongside the new “Durango” Xbox, which fits with the EEDAR President’s comments above. Given that Epic can afford to just generate other tech demos (especially if Microsoft are throwing them another huge wodge of cash to keep Gears exclusive to Xbox), this seems unlikely.

Option two: the demo is running on Microsoft’s next Xbox hardware. This is also implausible, as developers have told us off-the-record that they already know the planned specifications of the next Xbox and Microsoft has said that it doesn’t plan to reveal the next Xbox until E3 next year. At the moment that hardware will just be a high-end PC – which is not something anyone need pay to keep hidden.

Three: that Microsoft or Activision have just bought an exclusive to the Unreal 4 Engine for a given period. Frankly, given the profits Epic would miss and the long-term damage to their position in the engine market, this would cost as much as the final option…

Four: Microsoft has bought Epic and with them the Unreal 4 Engine, and plans to reveal this alongside the next Xbox. Again, like Activision, this would threaten the hugely-profitable engine-licensing side of Epic’s business, but Microsoft might not be so concerned about that. Having exclusive access to the engine is what they’re paying the big money for, not just Epic’s Gears of War IP, and they’ve paid way over the odds for much smaller pieces of tech before; if anything, pulling Unreal off the market damages the competing platforms a lot more.

Is there anything that might counter the likelihood of a Microsoft exclusivity agreement? Well, the price tag is going to be huge. Microsoft isn’t short on cash (revenues hit a record high of $20.89 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2011) but they’re likely to be spending a lot of money on the new Xbox ‘720′. Back in 2008, Mark Rein said that $2 billion was the price he thought negotiations should start at; nowadays, given Epic’s market dominance and inflation, the price tag is likely to be a lot higher. Microsoft’s willpower might not be strong enough to carry this through, at such a price.”

Is Epic for sale?

“The folly of these thoughts is that we don’t know if Epic is up for sale, because we don’t know who owns it. It’s a private company, based in North Carolina. Though we can look at the history of the company, and a few public records, its ownership is mostly under wraps. We know Tim Sweeney started it as Potomac computer systems in 1991, changed into Epic MegaGames in the same year. Yet, their website gives away very little about them, save that the big names in the company – Mike Capps, Cliff Bleszinski, Jay Wilbur, Mark Rein and Chris Perna – are the company’s executive officers. It seems likely that founder Tim Sweeney still owns the company, or at least a controlling share of it.

Capps mused publicly last year about whether Epic would sell out: “We’ve seen plenty of offers over the past 20 years, so of course we’ve considered [being bought out]. That’s just good business. But weighed against the impact it would have on our culture, and how much we value our independence, it’s just never made sense. Let’s face it, things are going pretty well here. Why risk messing that up?”

But if Epic did sell out to, or go exclusive with, Microsoft, what would the ramifications for gamers be? Firstly, Unity would become the default development tool for iOS, Android, and the weaker devices – something Rein in particular would loathe. The platform holders on the other side of the deal – PlayStation and Nintendo in this case – would have to look at other engines or use internal solutions. Suddenly, there would be a huge gap in the engine market that CryEngine is in a prime position to take advantage of. This would likely make the third-party publishers extremely unhappy, too, as Unreal is where their developers’ expertise lies.

Whatever the situation, the likeliest option in my opinion is that Microsoft or Activision have signed Unreal 4 up for an exclusive, and that means big things for third party developers – and for us as gamers. Can you imagine – no more huge shoulderpads on PlayStation? Or Unreal 4 only being used for Call of Duty, Spider-man and Blizzard’s Titan? The ramifications are epic.”

This article gives great insight on what might be happening behind closed does with these firms, and it’s intriguing to say the least. I, for one, would love to know if Activision is building a new engine for its most precious asset: Call of Duty, or as the article hints, might licence Unreal 4 and for next-generation COD titles.