![Epic outlines dev costs for iPhone Unreal Engine [UPDATE]](/static/images/news/35760/184_7597_Apple UDK.jpg?i=1283420391 "Epic outlines dev costs for iPhone Unreal Engine [UPDATE]")
‘iUDK’ developers won’t pay royalties until sales milestones are met
[UPDATE: Epic says there will likely be multiple licensing deals for iPhone Unreal Engine]
Epic Games will likely licence out its iPhone-custom Unreal Engine for free, the group’s boss has said, and won’t begin to take royalties unless apps make commercial headway on the App Store.
“I don’t need 2,000 business relationships where I make 38 cents [from each],” said studio president Mike Capps, in reference to the commonly rock-bottom prices of iPhone apps.
“Once folks get successful, we take a percentage off of that,” he said in an interview with trade site Gamasutra.
Epic Games took the stage yesterday at an Apple press conference to announce its first mobile project, codenamed Project Sword, and to announce it will soon make its engine available for other iOS developers.
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Capps said that the engine licencing deal will be similar to the one tied with the Unreal Development Kit – though could be free up front for commercial projects.
Epic Games receives a 25 per cent royalty rate on all games that use the Unreal Development Kit, though the first $5,000 earned by a developer is however free of charge. Developers working in a commercial capacity have to pay Epic $99 up-front for the tool, though students, modders and hobbyists can download it for free.
Epic has been interested in the potential of mobile games for some time. The group’s vice president Mark Rein recently said mobile devices will ultimately host triple-A productions.
In expanding into the mobile space, the group’s closest business rival is Unity technologies – whose free-to-use game engine has rapidly gained popularity with mobile and web game developers.
There will be multiple licensing models and we'll work with licensees directly to figure out the best fit for each situation.
However, the first order of business is to work with the folks who already license UE3 on a source code basis, are already familiar with the tools and pipeline, and want to leverage those skills to make kick-ass mobile games. The second step is dealing with folks who see the potential of UE3 on mobile, and other platforms, and want to make a higher level of game for those platforms like our folks at Chair are doing with Project Sword on iOS and did with Shadow Complex on XBLA. For these companies there will be a more traditional licensing model with full source code and support.
The question Mike was answering was about "people who are interested in doing something smaller, more phone-oriented games launching at a 99 cent price." To be honest we really don't have an answer for those people this week or even this month. For them a UDK-style pricing model and non-source code license would make good sense but we currently UDK only lets you build PC games at the moment so this was purely theoretical.
For now we're focused on working with developers who want to bring the highest quality games to mobile platforms and more importantly, the type of games where our technology makes the most sense and adds the most value. We'll work with them to figure out a suitable licensing model.
We see mobile as a long term opportunity for us and our licensees and, while we're figuratively just getting started, we're in it for the long haul.
(Feel free to correct the story to add the above to it)
As an aside, I was in the room when Mike started doing interviews but it was so hot and crowded there that I decided to wander outside to talk to some folks out there.
But it was a fantastic day!
