Midway Games has announced today its entrance into a multi-year, multi-product agreement with Epic Games in publish three games in the Unreal franchise. That said, none of the Unreal titles that Midway will be publishing worldwide are slated for the PlayStation 2. The significance, you ask? According to Midway, two future installments of Unreal Tournament will be released on PC and "upcoming next generation consoles." PS3, perhaps? We can only speculate for now.



"This relationship with Epic further bolsters the strength of our portfolio of top-rated games and allows us to leverage the marketing capabilities of our organization to take the Unreal franchise to an even broader audience of gamers," summed up David Zucker, president and chief executive officer of Midway. "It immediately establishes Midway as a leader in the PC games sector. Additionally, Unreal Championship 2, scheduled for introduction in February, should further extend Midway's growing track record for distributing top quality games. We are delighted that Epic chose Midway over other publishers and we look forward to working closely with the Epic team to carefully manage this valuable franchise."



"Midway gets it. They hit right at the heart of gamers," gushed said Mark Rein, vice president and co-founder, Epic Games. "Not only did they create many classics including Defender, NFL Blitz and Mortal Kombat, but they're making great new games such as Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, The Suffering, NBA Ballers, NARC and Area 51. They make awesome games and don't apologize for it, so we think games like Unreal Tournament will fit in perfectly here. In our opinion Midway is doing the industry's best marketing and promotional campaigns and they will contribute strongly to the ongoing success of the Unreal franchise."



Chances are, any announcement on the next-gen Unreal Tournament titles are a ways off, but we'll keep on the inside once anything slips.