Interview with Tim Sweeney
Posted by @ 3:26 PM, EST
UnrealKingdom had a little chat with Tim Sweeney of Epic.
Some of it:

"Jeh: Brandon Reinhart recently stated that he got Unreal Tournament up and running on the Playstation 2 and mentioned that you would be responsible for the rendering and graphics programming for the platform. Have you had a chance to start on this yet?

Tim: Hell yes! Unreal Tournament levels are up and running with all rendering feaures implemented though work on optimization has just begun. Over the next couple months, performance will go from "playable" to "kickass".

Jeh: Can you foresee any problems or stumbling blocks programming for this new platform?

Tim: The Playstation2 is a very powerful beast, opening up major areas of optimizations where Windows programmers aren't used to going. It's a great challenge squeezing the maximum performance out of it. That's going the be the holy grail for Playstation2 programmers.
As for other problems, none at all, and we've been very pleasantly surprised with the Playstation2. The development environment is easy to work with, and the documentation is great.

Jeh: From what you have seen of the Playstation 2, the success of the Dreamcast and hype for Nintendo's 'Dolphin', do you see Epic moving more towards console programming? It seems like, from other developers I've spoken with, that the console technology is now moving ahead of the PC in terms of graphics rendering and speed. Is this true in your view?

Tim: Well, looking at the evolution of consoles, they have thus far remained separate from PC's in audience (both among gamers and developers). But we see them converging on the same audience really soon. The Playstation2 has caught up to the PC in RAM and exceeded it in processing power; and since it supports USB and PCMCIA, it seems like releasing a hard disk, modem, and keyboard would be a next logical step. On the other hand, PC's are slowly improving in reliability, and once PC games "just work" when customers install them, with comparable reliability to consoles, then PC games will start appealing much better to mass market gamers.
In the Playstation 1 and Sega Genesis days, console programmers and PC programmers were two completely different sets of people with wildly different talents and goals. But, now, we see that PC developers are going to make great Playstation2 developers. And vice-versa. So a convergence of engine technology and development strategies seems inevitable."
Full interview