UT2K7 Title Sheds Weight, Becomes UT3, Heads to 360
Publisher Midway announced today during a press event that Epic Games' anticipated Unreal Tournament 2K7 has been renamed to the simpler Unreal Tournament 3. It was also announced that the game, which has never had a solid release date but was previously expected on the early side of this year, is now set to ship some time in the second half of 2007. As for the reasoning behind the renaming, take your pick from one or more of the following: Epic wanted to sync it up with its now ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3, the game is coming too late to reasonably take the 2007 model year, the model year naming system is a bit suspect to begin with, UT2004 was just an update to UT2003 and not a full-scale entry, or UT2004 was the "real" version of UT2003. Take your pick.
Unreal Tournament 3 was one of the first games shown on PlayStation 3, and until now the game had only been announced for that system as well as for PC. Today, however, Midway confirmed persistent rumors that the game is in the works for Xbox 360 as well, the platform on which the company recently released Gears of War. Unusually for the series, this new incarnation of UT will feature a beefed up single-player component featuring online cooperative play, for all platforms.