Unreal Tournament will make a comeback. This Thursday, on the official UnrealEngine Twitch.tv channel, Epic Games will make some announcement about the future of the franchise. The only other concrete information that we have is in the original tweet from Paul Meegan, their vice president of product development for about a year and a half.

 

 

So, Unreal Engine 4 dev community and Epic. That could mean any number of things but it sure seems to suggest that the community will have an active hand in its development. As our readers know, UE4's licensing structure has transitioned from an undisclosed, large fee upfront and a percentage of revenue to a small monthly subscription (and five percent of revenue). Full source code is provided to these licensees.

Perhaps the game is not, itself, the product?

Or maybe it is. Who knows. I just get an… off… feeling from the structure of this preannouncement (and that is not a bad thing). It is set to occur on the stream where they record Unreal Engine training videos. They explicitly mention "UE4 Dev Community + Epic". Why the community so front and center?

According to Edge, Epic is currently working on three titles: Fortnite, an unannounced mobile game, and an unannounced "high-end next generation title". The mobile title is currently in pre-production and will not be "formally announced for some time". This, of course, leaves one of two possibilities: it is the "high-end next generation title" or Epic is not counting it as an official title, for some reason.

Going a little further, Fortnite is said to be PC exclusive. If Unreal Tournament is their high-end next generation title, it will either be their only offering on the next generation consoles, or they do not have a planned offering on a next generation console.

As fun as it is to speculate, I should be clear that this is entirely speculation. We will know more when Epic makes their announcement, Thursday at 2PM EDT.