Unreal Engine 3

[gglazer]

Not new news but it's still comforting to know that the surface will have some gonads when it comes to gaming graphics:

Microsoft Surface Games Will Look Kickass With Unreal Engine 3

 

[Michfan]

Based on performance I have seen with Hydro Thunder and Jetpack Joyride on Surface RT, I suspect Unreal 3 will only be playable on much higher powered systems. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[GoHack]

The Demo Epic Citadel, using Unreal Engine 3, certainly shows what Surface RT can do using the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, but this Demo had already been written for the iPAD more than a year or two ago, yet no game release as of yet using that engine. It took the writers only around two weeks to do the Demo on the iPAD.

I hope some serious, graphics intensive games do get released for Surface RT instead of the simple dumb ones. Of course I hope the Surface RT doesn't become obsolete in just a few months down the road, to become neglected like past Android devices have been. I don't know how far along Nvidia is w/it's Tegra 4. Hopefully it'll be at least a year so that we can see some development w/the Tegra 3 first.

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[J515OP]

I hope some serious, graphics intensive games do get released for Surface RT instead of the simple dumb ones.

Well, this is just the nature of App Stores and app games. Not to say there aren't good games available but 99% of them are going to be stupid simple games. Nintendo proved this is the largest market for gaming (simple games) and Apple figured out how to get it to the masses (iTunes). There is no going back from that. You just have to hope the true gaming companies keep pace with the thousands of simple game app developers out there. So far it has been easier to sell 10 million $1 games than it has been to sell 1 million $10 tablet games.

Of course I hope the Surface RT doesn't become obsolete in just a few months down the road, to become neglected like past Android devices have been.

Microsoft has taken this in a completely different direction than Android. The hardware specs are tightly controlled by MS as are the partners (at the moment) who can build RT tablets. Since there aren't dozens of different chipsets and the OEMs are't making their own variations of the OS you should see much longer and more stable support of Windows RT tablets and OS updates. This will be a lot more similar to Apple on the maintenance and update front but instead of literally one hardware manufacturer you will have several.

I don't know how far along Nvidia is w/it's Tegra 4. Hopefully it'll be at least a year so that we can see some development w/the Tegra 3 first.

Because of the reasons above this is not really an issue with the way Windows RT works. Pushing for new hardware is ok here because the only down side is that your older hardware will feel slow by comparison (inevitable). MS will likely keep the standard specs strategy going forward so you aren't going to see a wild west of hardware like in Android. If newer better spec is provided by MS all its devices will have to meet or beat the spec and you don't have to worry about development curves falling behind.

MS is really trying to split the difference between locked down Apple and open source Android, so they have some of the pros and cons of each (tight controls like Apple, but multiple hardware choices like Android).

JP