NVidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA, NVDA message board) recently demonstrated their complete port of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) on a Tegra-driven Windows RT tablet. The company announced the move of the full-featured engine to the new Windows platforms and its release to developers.
While this may look like a boast on part of NVDA to show what a powerhouse the Tegra is, the fact that one of the most licensed game engines of recent years is available to mobile developers is no small feat. The news implies that a great number of the existing 200+ titles using UE3 can now be effortlessly be ported to mobile.
Is this good news for Windows 8 / RT and the hardware it will run on? Not necessarily. Two of the biggest names in game development are looking at Windows 8 with a big frown on their face. Gabe Newell, former Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) employee and current head of privately held Valve Corporation - game developer and world's largest online game retailer, went so far as to call Windows 8 a "catastrophe". Rob Pardo, vice president of game design at Activision Blizzard, Inc. mostly echoed Newell's sentiment.
With Windows RT slated to only run applications downloaded through the Windows Store, the main reason developers are frowning at Microsoft's new baby, this drastically reduces the distribution venues and makes the OS a less attractive choice to develop for.
NVidia seems to be enthusiastic about Windows RT but that may be because they are not limited to RT hardware and power a wide range of mobile devices with their Tegra. It remains to be seen how many developers are willing to tie their hands with the narrow funnel of Windows Store distribution, as Microsoft are well known for being very big on exclusivity, especially when it comes to game releases.
The bottomline may well be that NVDA is a winner no matter how the Win RT situation pans out as they have their Tegra 3 workhorse. Even if the demonstration remains just that, it is still an excellent display of the technological prowess of NVidia.
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