Building upon the (denied) rumors from earlier in the year that Epic Games was a target for a Microsoft buyout, Develop thought it would be entertaining to speculate on which companies might be better suitors for the folks behind the Unreal Engine. Please note that in no way is anyone trying to imply that any of this is actually in the works; this article is more of an exercise in matchmaking... and you might be surprised at what they've come up with.

Assuming someone was to make a move for Epic (which we are not claiming, by the way, just speculating), if you look back at recent announcements, it seems that out of all the more ‘neutral’ technology companies that are most likely to grab a piece of the pie is Autodesk – and there's several reasons why it in particular could benefit from owning an engine.

Slainchild has released DM-Acquisition for Unreal Tournament 3 and as we've come to expect from his work, it's a great-looking and great-playing level. This one is designed for 1v1 play, but it's large enough to accept several more should you so desire.

Download links are available in the release thread.

Fans of every gaming platform (and those with vested interests in) like to toot their own horn and Microsoft's Games For Windows senior director Kevin Unangst (unsurprisingly) does just that in an interview with Gamasutra.

Gamasutra: Okay. I was talking to Nolan Bushnell a little while ago. I was asking him if he ever thought that there could only be a single format for games, and he said he's pretty sure it would be the PC that would be the de facto single format on which games are released in the distant future. What do you think about that?

KU: That's interesting. I have a lot of respect for Nolan. I hadn't heard that he'd said that, so that's an interesting view of the future. I think that we're uniquely in both the console business and the PC business, and I think there are certain instances where consumers like playing in their living room for some types of games. I like playing on the biggest screen in the house.

But I think we share the view that the PC will always be at the center of the innovation that is happening for gameplay -- new game types, new business models, new distribution models.

It's lead in the Internet, it's lead in the acceleration of graphics, and I don't see any reason to believe that the PC will change, and that trend will go away any time soon. It is at the forefront, and I believe it will continue to be at the forefront.

And who knows, in that vision of the future, everything may be called a PC, right? Everything's going to get more intelligent and more Internet-connected, and the investments that Microsoft's making in both of those worlds I think will allow us to bring better experiences to consumers, no matter where they come in. They start on the consoles? We're going to make sure that when they add a PC to the mix that that experience gets better, and vice versa.

CVG has word that The Bourne Conspiracy demo has reached Xbox Live. I understand, however, that it may be only accessible to Gold members.

Russian developer Avalon Style Entertainment announced today that it has licensed Unreal Engine 3 for it 4х4 Off Road III driving simulation game. The press release has all of the details.

“Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is at the forefront of multiplatform game development,” said Vyacheslav Gordeyev, CEO of Avalon Style. “The technology has been successfully used in many critically acclaimed titles, and we feel fully armed to make the first off-road driving simulator on Unreal Engine 3 thanks to its built-in vehicle support, powerful PhysX system, and many other leading edge features.”

Gamespot has spiked Turok PC with a score of 6.0, citing underwhelming production values and poor performance. Right now it is currently averaging a 67% according to GameRankings.

To help ease one of the more common complaints with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, the PC release supplements the checkpoint saves with a quicksave and quickload feature. Sadly, quicksaves are broken, and using them can disrupt scripted events and cause other noticeable and inexcusable issues. Should you load a quicksave, you may find that all enemies have disappeared and downed teammates have sprung back to full health. In two cases, loading a quicksave kept an event necessary to continue to the next level from occurring, which forced us to restart the level from the beginning. These events could all be re-created on a second play-through, which is a sure sign of a busted feature.

Hopefully, a patch will be released to address some of the killer bugs like the one mentioned above. That won't help spice up the suspect lack of graphical polish, of course:

Turok was built using the Unreal 3 engine, yet it pales in comparison to many other games that use the same technology. Environments are bland and look nothing like the lush jungles featured in other shooters. Foliage is underwhelming and textures are dull, and the linear levels never give you a sense that you're making your way through a tangled tropical paradise. It seems that most of the attention was given to the dinosaurs themselves; their animations are outstanding, and they look daunting and ferocious.

Two Unreal Engine 3-powered games have tasted the delay stick. Hail to the Chimp will now be delayed until June 24th, for "final touches" as developer Wideload Games has put it, while Gamespot has reported that Prototype, an open-world action game, has been pushed back to a nonspecific date in 2009 for similar reasons.

Shacknews has posted a gameplay teaser for the upcoming UE3-Powered Mirror's Edge, in development by EA DICE, best known for the Battlefield series of games. The game, which has been described as "A first-person take on the Prince of Persia-style action-adventure platforming genre," looks very interesting indeed.

Mirror's Edge is due out this year.

Over on GameDev.net Daily, an exciting news article popped up. Apparently, Bioware is going more draconian than even 2K Games could have imagined with Bioshock.

"After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run."

The quote comes from this post on the Bioware forums. Check out the fourth post. Should our next poll be "Who will be cancelling their Mass Effect pre-orders"?