Unigine has announced that it has joined Sony's Tool & Middleware program. This means that developers will be able to use the cross-platform engine for their PS3 games.

"We are pleased to join Sony Computer Entertainment's Tools and Middleware program for PS3 since support of the modern hardware is one of the most important strategic directions of our company. We plan to make our technology available on PS3 at the end of 2009. It is targeted to AAA-level games and can be licensed by companies from all over the world", said Denis Shergin, CEO of Unigine LLC.

Unigine engine provides photorealistic 3D render, powerful physics module, object-oriented scripting system with a very rich library (more than 3000 methods out-of-the box), full-featured GUI module, sound subsystem, and a set of flexible tools. Efficient and well-architected framework supporting multi-core systems makes Unigine a highly scalable solution, on which multi-platform games with different hardware requirements can be based. Currently both the engine and the toolset are available for Windows and Linux platforms. This feature-rich middleware is successfully used in various VR projects as well as in modern games of different genres.

"The current version of our Unigine engine is specifically designed to take advantage of full capabilities of the current generation hardware focused on photorealistic rendering. PS3 is definitely a very powerful platform and we are interested in leveraging its potential for the needs of game developers", commented Alexander Zaprjagaev, CTO of Unigine LLC.

The company also announces that a free, fully-functional evaluation version of the engine and the toolset will be available for those PS3 game developers, who are interested in the technology and wish to try it out first. Detailed info on prices will be announced later this year, however they will be very affordable. Moreover, PS3 game developers who will license PC version of Unigine engine till August, 31 will get 50% discount for PS3 version.