The tech genius discusses the advances of smartphones and tablets and the opportunities for Unreal Engine 3.
Epic Games has embraced tablets by releasing some of its own bestselling games like Infinity Blade and the upcoming Infinity Blade Dungeons. But more game developers are licensing Unreal Engine 3 technology for tablets these days. Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, sees a mobile future where tablets will continue to evolve and dominate the game industry.
“We’ve been astonished with the pace of innovation on the smartphone and tablet side,” said Sweeney. “When Apple came out with the iPhone 3GS, it was the first mobile device we looked at and thought that our engine could run on this. After about six months of effort, we had Unreal Engine 3 up and running and got on stage at several of Apple’s events demonstrating our game running on it. Now with Android tablets and Tegra technology, we’re seeing completely mainstream-capable 3D gaming platforms. You can build a game that competes with the best of them on tablets and smartphones and it’s really opening up gaming to a far larger audience.”
In addition to the improvements that are already mapped by NVIDIA with its full line of Tegra chips, the sheer number of devices flooding the market and the continued low-priced options for these more advanced Tegra devices is quickly impacting the globe.
“If you look at something like 35 million Xboxes out there, there are hundreds of millions of smartphones,” said Sweeney. “You can plausibly look at the smartphone business and say in another ten years, maybe half of all human beings on earth will have a smartphone that’s capable of running serious games. And that’s going to change the world. We’re seeing enormous growth worldwide in those businesses. They’re not traditional console businesses, but if you have any power source available within a day’s walk, you can have a smartphone and that changes everything.”
