Buena Vista Games Adopts Unreal Engine 3

Buena Vista Games, the software publishing arm of Disney, has announced that it will be using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 for multiple next-generation games. Only one game so far has been announced, which will be a new entry in the Turok franchise. Formerly developed by Acclaim and officially licensed from Classic Media, the Turok series began as a fairly well-received early first-person shooter for the Nintendo 64. Over time, it lost its following and was last seen in Turok Evolution, a poorly-reviewed debut on current generation consoles. Buena Vista Games recently announced a new video game title using the license, to be worked on by BVG’s Vancouver studio, Propaganda Games. "We have ambitious goals for the future and a strategy to enhance Buena Vista Games' position as a major force in interactive entertainment. BVG's intellectual properties, combined with Epic's leadership in underlying technology, ensures the best game content for consumers,” said VP of worldwide production Michael Ryder. "Licensing Unreal Engine 3 is a strategic move to provide cost-effective and timely delivery of new content, allowing our development teams to leverage the enormous capabilities of emerging next-generation systems." Epic's Unreal Engine 3 has already been announced for both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, and multiple licensees (including Microsoft Game Studios, Namco, Midway, Silicon Knights, and VU Games) have signed up to use the middleware, which is currently the dominant third-party game engine going into the next-generation transition.