Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

While the developer chat with the folks at Epic didn’t give a PS3 or PC release date or even a PC demo release date, it pretty much put to rest the idea that players of the PS3 version of the game would be able to play against the PC players. While technically possible, the lag time of having to re-certify game updates for the consoles is what made Epic decide not to go down this road.

He did say that later the feature could appear, but said the likelihood of that was “small”. They just can’t sacrifice the ability to quickly patch their PC game by holding things back for console certification to finish. I’m pretty sure they’re thinking about exploits and hacks, and they were very clear to note that the PC market is their bread and butter for this game.

Epic can’t ignore their “very loyal PC user base”, and I applaud them for being honest in this interview and not spinning it badly as other companies would. That said, I think their reluctance to build a cross-platform game might be dooming the PS3 version and all the money they’ve spent on it.

Even though the game will apparently have a single player story mode, I think interest in UT3 will definitely take a hit with this news. As someone without a PC that can do heavy lifting in the graphics department, I was hoping I’d be able to enjoy the game on my PS3 along with folks running the PC version, ensuring a large number of servers and players to play with. Given the PS3′s low installed base I’m not really sure this game will have long-term staying power on the system.

And who else has the chops to make an incredibly good shooter run multi-platform, instantly creating a major new console IP to be reckoned with by linking it successfully with its desktop PC gaming roots? Epic is the right company to do the job.

I hope they reconsider and make multi-platform play more of a priority, but as of now I’m going to look at the game using the point of view we should use to look at all games: what does the game have at launch and assuming no further publisher support or updates after launch.

Other tidbits that were divulged include:
- Linux executable will ship with the game.
- Mac executable will be available after release.
- Windows version will feature the full game editor they used to build the game.
- Quad-core CPUs will be supported, but no 64 bit version is planned.
- A new dynamic music system will change the soundtrack based on your actions.
- A new Duel gametype will be included, 1v1 with a queue of observers waiting to play.

Someone also asked the silly question as to which console the game looked better on as a decision as to whether to buy a PS3 or an Xbox 360:
Q: Will ut3 look better visually on a ps3 or 360? Im going to pick up a console for this game and thats my deciding factor?
MarkRein[Epic]: Do you have children? If so which one of your children do you like best? That’s the kind of question you’re asking us to answer. No thanks. We like all of our children!

It’s a good thing they didn’t include a PC in that question, because if money is no object I’m sure you can make a PC that this game will look phenomenal on.

The IRC chat full log, linked to by the Shacknews story, talks about a lot of different facets of the game, from how quickly you can and can’t switch weapons and why all the way down to how the new gravity system affects what mod types you’ll see.

One more thing. When I visited the UT3 website I noticed that there’s no mention of an Xbox 360 version of the game on the front page. I see the all-important PC CD and DVD boxes along with the PS3 box art, the PC DVD ROM Software logo, the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation logos, but nothing for Microsoft’s console. Is it that far away that it doesn’t exist on their homepage any more?

Check out the summary at Shacknews or the chat log at BeyondUnreal.