Its actually a clarification of Mark Rein's; a prior story made it sound like they hadn't even started work on the UT3 for the 360, which isn't the case.
Mark Rein has said Unreal Tournament 3 already works on Xbox 360, and it did as far back as last spring.
What he meant to say yesterday was that his team will "start working on it again" after Christmas, not begin from scratch, silly.
"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," Rein clarified to games blog Joystiq.
So, the question "why?" Why not release on the PC, 360 and PS3 simultaneously? Yes, it might well have meant that there would be no chance of getting mods on the 360 version (they're still talking about MS's policies on the matter), but that aside? Losing out on Christmas holiday sales is bad, right?
The answer is, obviously, money. The possible answer is "money and we're damned sneaky."
Good move on Sony's part in that they denied the 360 a great game during the holiday season this year. By obtaining (translation: paying off Epic) a timed exclusive, they get something to hang over the 360 ("Got it first") during an important buying time, while people are deciding which system they're going to buy for themselves or others. Sony has deep pockets and a need to build their library, plus having such a prestigious title on their system first is no small thing (whether or not its a Halo 3 killer is up to you).
Its a better move for Epic who basically got paid to avoid having to compete directly with Halo 3 (and planned or not, dodged Bioshock and The Orange Box). To be honest, by missing the holidays and all the high-profile games coming out, they don't really have to worry about other games in their (rather saturated) genre cannibalizing their sales. On top of that, the tools you need to create mods for the PS3 version of UT3 are, you guessed it, PC based. I have little doubt that should they hammer out a deal with Microsoft to allow mods on the 360 version (its a matter of Microsoft's Live policies, not technology), that this will remain the case. Indeed, this might even give them additional leverage in dealing with Microsoft! So it doesn't matter if you get the PS3 version - if you want to make mods, they still sell a copy of the PC version!
We had a fun discussion with Killswitch about this ages ago. There are some very good reasons why you'd want to make your mods (or rather, have to) on the PC that the PS3 cannot duplicate at this time, but the fact remains that's an extra copy you have to purchase.
Allegedly they delayed Unreal Championship 2 in order to avoid Halo 2 (or at least were thankful they had different release dates). Given that UT3 was scheduled for the holidays this year on PC and PS3 (and might still make it), it looks like Epic had a pretty good idea of what they would be dealing with on the 360, so opted to dodge. Getting Sony to pay for it? Getting PS3 owners to rebuy UT3 for the PC in order to create mods? Almost amazingly audacious in some people's eyes, but there are technical reasons for it that are undeniable, and lets be honest, PS3 owning Unreal fans wouldn't be happy with a mere map editor...
Bravo, Epic.