Epic Games boss Mark Rein has stated that the company is unlikely to issue a demo of the PlayStation 3 version of Unreal Tourament 3, despite plans to release one for the PC.
Speaking to Eurogamer at the recent Leipzig Games Convention, Rein stated, "We’ll have a PC demo for UT, [but] I don’t think we’ll have a PS3 demo before the game ships.”
Logistically, Rein explained that any time spent on focusing on a demo release would inevitably draw attention away from the final version of the game. As an example, he drew similarities with last year’s Xbox 360 title Gears of War, stating, "What we told Microsoft last year – they wanted a demo for Gears of War and we said ‘you’ve got a choice – you can have the demo this year or the game this year’."
"We’re not a big huge company with the resources to do that, and all the time we’re testing that demo we’re not testing our full game, which we need to be doing constantly," explained Rein.
For the PC, however, the process is fundamentally a different task in which any demo would effectively play a similar role to that of a beta version, allowing the developer to refine certain elements as they see fit.
Unreal Tournament 3 is scheduled for release on PlayStation 3 and PC this November. An Xbox 360 version will arrive in 2008.