Unreal Engine 3 is kind of a big deal

Epic Games is quite possibly the most innovative game engine developer in the industry. It's no secret that the Unreal Engine series has been an incredible success, with Fury and Vanguard both using iterations of it, as well as a whole slew of recent announcements of licensing for all sorts of game mediums, and beyond.

It's one of the latest announcements that could possibly be the first use of a video game engine outside of games themselves in a major project. HDFilms will be using the Unreal Engine 3 to power their upcoming 3D Animated Series, "Chadam".

This is building on the fact that Destineer - a company founded by an ex-Bungie executive - has signed on to use Unreal Engine 3 in a genre you wouldn't normally expect such an engine to be used.

Peter Tamte, president of Destineer says, "The Unreal Engine 3 is an impressively versatile piece of technology, and we are very excited to utilize it for our unannounced project. We are using the Unreal Engine to make a game for a genre in which you would not expect to see it. The engine is performing marvelously and Epic’s support has been top-notch.”

This of course isn't the first time Unreal Engine 3 will be used outside of Epic's... epic titles, Gears of War and Unreal Tournament III. It was also licensed by Faramix Enterprises to create a next-gen first person shooter, and Epic added Umbra's amazing technology to their integrated partners list in September.

Oh, there's also this little title called BioShock that employed the Unreal Engine 3, so that's yet another plaque on the proverbial wall of fame for Epic Games.

What else is going to be using Unreal Engine 3? A better question is "what isn't?" at this point. You can check out a list of all of the games past, present, and future that have used one of the Unreal Engine iterations on the Unreal Engine Wikipedia page. Suffice to say, Unreal Engine is kind of a big deal.