Unreal Engine 3 IS in the works for the Wii (make sure to read entire post)

I thought I was going crazy when I read this. I searched around a number of sources to see if the news we reported was different from what everyone else did. I found the exact same quotes we used in our original story. I even checked our story comments to see if I missed something that you guys caught. The only place I saw the full quote was NeoGAF, which I will explain later.

Stick with me on this one, it’s worth it. Okay, so a couple days back we posted an interview with Mark Rein that was conducted by Wired. Here is the portion we had posted from the interview.

Wired: It’s also tough to ignore the success of the Wii at this point. Do you guys have any plans to be in that space?

Rein: Hey, we’re in that space! Red Steel, Splinter Cell — those use our previous engine technology. But it’s not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It’s really designed for next-gen, high-definition.

Now this evening a GameSpot article popped up that quoted the Wired interview…but there excerpts were a tad different. I clicked over to the Wired interview once again, and it seems that what we saw before was the shortened version. Here is Mr. Rein’s full answer.

WN: It’s also tough to ignore the success of the Wii at this point. Do you guys have any plans to be in that space?

MR: Hey, we’re in that space! Red Steel, Splinter Cell — those use our previous engine technology. There’s a Brothers in Arms game as well. there will be quite a few games on the Wii that we get a little involvement from us. But it’s not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It’s really designed for next-gen, high-definition. One of our licensees has been porting it, and they might be successful at that, and that would be great if they do it. It’s doable, but not something that we’re going to focus on.

Well, doesn’t that give a bit more information?! As I was saying, when we posted the news, the short version of the interview was the only one available. It seems that many news outlets reported on the first version, not knowing that the full version was coming. As I was researching what happened, I found a NeoGAF post where they were discussing the extended quote above. The first post in their thread is dated a little over a day later from when we covered it.

As Mr. Rein states, there indeed is a Brothers in Arms title in the works for the Wii. Last we heard, this was a port of D-Day which was released on the PSP (see story below for another confirmation). After hunting around a little bit more, I found this excerpt from an IGN article.

Insiders claim that Gearbox was at one point experimenting with Unreal Engine 3 and attempting to create a dumbed-down version that would run on Wii. Unfortunately, we have been unable to confirm the accuracy of those rumors.

So Mr. Rein confirms the title, states that someone is working to port the UE3 to the Wii, and IGN claims they heard rumors of Gearbox trying to get it done. It seems way too coincidental for all three of these things to come together like that, and not turn out to be true.

No more investigative work for me, thank you! I spent the better part of an hour hunting around all sorts of places to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind!