Destineer subsidiary MacSoft reports that more than 400,000 Mac users downloaded the recently released beta tech demo version of Unreal Tournament 2003 in its first four days of availability.
The release last week of the demo version of MacSoft’s forthcoming game ended months of anticipation from avid Mac game fans who sought the demo’s release. Unreal Tournament 2003 is already available for Windows, and an early development version of the game was demonstrated at Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, Calif. this past January.
MacSoft general manager Al Schilling noted that the actual number of users who have downloaded the demo version is probably higher than MacSoft’s stated figures, but it gives users some idea of the popularity of this new release. “It is hard to get an exact figure, but we can track at least 400,000 downloads,” he said.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is a first person shooter (FPS) that features arena-style combat in a futuristic setting. The beta tech demo sports four maps — two “Deathmatch” maps, a “Capture the Flag” map, and one map with a new style of gameplay unique to Unreal Tournament 2003 called “Bombing Run.” The beta tech demo provides players with a taste of multiplayer action and also allows them to participate in offline play against “bots,” or computer-controlled players, if they prefer.
The game was originally created by Digital Extremes in collaboration with Epic Games Inc. MacSoft is coordinating the Macintosh development of Unreal Tournament 2003 with Epic itself. MacSoft remains elusive about a specific release date for the full version of the game, although the company remains committed to a “Spring” release.
Minimum system requirements for the Unreal Tournament 2003 Mac beta tech demo call for a 700MHz G3 or faster, 32MB video card, 256MB RAM, and Mac OS X 10.2.6.
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