Gaming fans should be pleased to hear that Epic’s Unreal 3 Engine SDK is making its way into the hands of Mac developers. The Unreal 3 Engine already exists both on OS X and iOS, and we’ve been enjoying games built upon its technology. It wasn’t until the latest version of the Unreal SDK (the stuff developers use to make Unreal 3 games) that Mac support was included, and Epic says that all games built with the Unreal 3 tech can run natively on the Mac.
Games won’t magically just run, however; they still need to be ported, of course, but what this means is that the porting process becomes easier and quicker (not to mention cheaper, which is a big deciding factor in whether your favorite games migrate to Macintosh from Windows or consoles).
The Unreal series, known best for its jaw-dropping graphics, has had something of a hit and miss history with the Mac. The original Unreal, released in 1998, was ported to the Mac along with a number of other games that shared the engine. As companies came and went, the series (and the technology under its hood) also ebbed and flowed, but this latest update to the SDK is probably the best way to ensure that many more Unreal 3 games will come to the Mac. The technology is already being used to develop for iOS, and is the engine behind last year’s hit, Infinity Blade.
Source: TUAW
