Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 Won’t Support Current Consoles, Except it Will

The high-powered next generation game engine Unreal Engine 4 was shown off again last week at GDC, with Epic claiming current consoles wouldn't be able to use it. However, the company has since backtracked on those statements.

After the presentation showing off the new Infiltrator demo, Epic's Mark Rein was asked if Unreal Engine 4 would work on the Wii U. "No," Rein replied according to IGN. "I just laugh at the question...Unreal Engine 4, we're not PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii U. It's next-gen technology. That's what we're aiming for."

Just a few days later though, Rein was singing a different tune all together. "If someone wants to take Unreal Engine 4 and ship a game on Wii U, they can," Rein told Engadget. "If they wanna ship an Unreal Engine 4 game on Xbox 360, they could make it happen." Epic's engine is supposed to be extremely scalable, and could in theory even work for mobile and browser-based games.

It's curious why Rein was so adamant in his earliest statements if Unreal Engine 4 could indeed work on current systems. While EA and DICE haven't backed off the idea that Frostbite 3 won't be making it to the Wii U, it will still be interesting to see if any Unreal Engine 4 games actually do appear on Nintendo's console.

Until the Unreal Engine 4 games start coming out though, we'll just have to keep wondering.