Rein: Work on 360's Unreal Tournament III just on hold

We had a spot of confusion yesterday when Epic's Mark Rein was quoted in one piece as saying work hadn't started on the Unreal Tournament III 360 version. Meanwhile, another site was reporting that they'd already played it on 360. Now, Rein has explained to us that it's not that work on the 360 version hasn't started yet, it's just that it's on hold.

"What I probably should have said was 'start working on it again.' We had the game up and running on all three platforms up until last spring. In fact Official Xbox Magazine came out and played the game for a great cover story they did on it. We stopped working on the 360 version so we could concentrate our efforts on shipping the various PC and PS3 versions. Once we get those out of the way, and take some time to enjoy the holidays with our friends and families, we'll start working on the 360 version again. There's still a decent bit of work to do. For example we have simple LAN play but no Xbox Live implementation yet and we need to work with Microsoft to figure out how to accommodate mods on their platform."

So take heart, 360 owners. While it may still be a while until you get your hands on the game, the wait won't be quite as excruciating as you thought.