It's quite safe to say that the genre will remain dead much like RTS has been for years already. Quake Champions was the most recent attempt to resucitate it but it ended up being a total failure. Arena fps in general is a dead genre at this point. No bad thing because the weapon balance was utter trash, but sadly I think we've seen the end of the UT franchise, at least for now. Until relatively recently (end of 2018-ish) Epic had a tiny team of people working on UT4 but work on that has been suspended now.
UT3 became an awesome game but the launch was handled very poorly which was probably fatal to the game in the long run. (I'm not trying to bash or hate on UT3 just trying to tell it like it is as I see it.) Instead, UT3 definitively killed the franchise. It's such a shame because if UT3 had been properly produced and polished and without the infection of Gears of War DNA, it could have been a really great game and maybe even a hit, and perhaps the UT franchise would have survived. That's what going from UT99 or UT 2004 to UT3 felt like. Imagine buying the new model year of your favorite car - say a loaded luxury BMW - but instead of getting an actual BMW, you get a car with a BMW badge that has the features of a stripped down Kia or Yugo. UT3 felt like a huge joke compared to the smooth operation, polish, and features of UT99 and UT 2004.
UT3 ended up being rushed out the door in time for Christmas (perhaps in a desperate attempt to hope it became a hit, saving Midway from bankruptcy?) in a rough, half-finished beta state that was heavily consolized (with a server browser and user interface that were an insult to PC players). In the months after UT3's release, after it became clear that the game had proven to be an abject failure and was not going to get polished and brought up to the standards of UT99 and UT 2004, when I loaded up the game and experienced the feel of the game play, I always used to say to myself, "What a shame."Įpic really screwed the pooch on UT3 by getting in bed with distributor Midway, which went bankrupt shortly after UT3's release, and also by hooking up with Gamespy. Originally posted by heuji:It's such a shame this game never really took off the same way its predecessors did.