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Unreal Engine 3 Evaluation To Become Available With Software Development Kit for PS3

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.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."