Sony's Phil Harrison has revealed that Sony has 'parachuted' in some of its SWAT Team of super engineers to help Epic get the most out of Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3. More specifically, they are there to optmise the SPUs and Harrison claims that the performance gains for developers using the Unreal Engine 3 will be exponential.

GI: But that was one of the things two years ago at E3 where you showed Unreal Tournament – with Epic and nVidia – why is this a reannouncement?

Harrison: If we’re honest, we didn’t do enough of a good job supporting them and getting them the tools and technology early enough. Also, Epic isn’t a huge company. They don’t have unlimited resource. We have parachuted in some of our SWAT team of super engineers to help them. Specifically, to optimize for SPUs, which are the point of difference that the Cell Processor has. That process is under way. The benefits that it yields to end developers whether they’re writing exclusive titles or multiplatform titles is that the performance on PS3 goes up exponentially, and it will make for a much better game experience.

GI: I’ve heard from a number of developers that one of the problems with porting a game that’s based on Unreal, or having a multiplatform game that’s based on Unreal, was because Epic didn’t have their tech up to speed and they were waiting for updates. Is this basically saying, “It’s going to get fixed, it’s going to get better?"

Harrison: Yes, I think that’s a fair summary. We know that there are a lot of developers who are using the technology, so this is a significant impact for the industry.