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SCEI Enters Epic Agreement
Sony obtains sub-licensing rights of the Unreal Engine.
Tokyo, July 21, 2005- Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced today that it
had entered into a strategic licensing agreement with Epic Games, a games engine developer
and based in North Carolina, U.S.A., effective July 20, 2005. Through this agreement, SCEI
obtains sublicensing rights of Unreal Engine 3, a complete games development framework
developed by Epic Games.
Unreal Engine 3 framework includes a programmable shaders tool, physics engine,
and GUI based physics attribution tool, along with various other tools, such as scenario
development, movie scene development, animation and particle animation tools. The most
significant among these engines and tools are the programmable shaders. By effectively using
this technology, content creators will be able to reproduce photo-realistic images without going
through a complicated calculation process. A wealth of tools contained in the Unreal Engine 3
framework will enable developers to create content to a certain level without requiring
specialist programming skills. An evaluation version of the Unreal Engine 3 will now become
available for the PLAYSTATION�3 developer community together with the Software
Development Kit for PLAYSTATION 3. Frontline support will be provided by SCEI.
"We're very happy to have a strategic licensing agreement with Epic Games," said
Masa Chatani, corporate executive and CTO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "The power
of Unreal Engine 3 demonstrated at E3 was so highly received. By providing the outstanding content development technology of Unreal Engine 3 for PS3 developer community, we believe
that many high quality content maximizing the power of PS3 will become available. "
"We�re very excited to be able to work closely with SCEI to provide our complete
end-to-end solution to PS3 developers," said Tim Sweeney, CEO, Epic Games. "Now, every
PS3 developer will be able to try out Unreal Engine 3 and be productive on their very first day
of PS3 development."
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