Digital Extremes, long-time partner of Epic and developer of Unreal Championship and Dark Sector, has added to the crossfire aimed at Unreal Engine 3.

In an interview with Australian site Gameplayer, Dark Sector director Steve Sinclair claims that the company opted out of using Epic's ever-popular engine so that it could hit its desired release date.

"A lot of promises were made about the Unreal Engine 3, particularly on PS3," he said. "But as we see now, the time frames haven't been met and now a lot of games using it are being held up." Digital Extremes wants to dictate its own release schedule, he said.

The comments come in the middle of a hail of abuse aimed at UE3, the eye of the storm being Silicon Knights' lawsuit against Epic, in which it claims SK was "misled" over how complete Xbox 360 Unreal Engine 3 code actually was.

In Epic's countersuit against Silicon Knights, the company lists various UE3-based games, both released and upcoming, that have received critical acclaim from various news outlets. Some of these include 2K's amazing BioShock, Bioware's Mass Effect, Webzen's Huxley, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas and Midway's Stranglehold.

Source: Gameplayer