Unreal Development Kit For iOS Coming This Week

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the UDK for iOS will be released for free on Thursday:

Epic Games is planning to release an updated version of its game-development tools, known as the Unreal Development Kit, to the public Thursday. The kit, which is free to download, will include new tools to create high-quality graphics and animations on iOS, effectively simplifying and speeding up the development processes for games. Epic doesn’t charge license fees to tinker with the kit nor to make free games. But, if developers want to sell their apps, they have to pay a $99 licensing fee and 25% royalties after the first $5,000 in sales.

“Apple’s App Store is the most vibrant market for mobile gaming,” said Epic co-founder Mark Rein. “If you’re going to make a game for a mobile device, and you want to make the most money, you’re nuts not to make it for iOS.

Rein also expressed his concerns about the Android platform, which doesn’t allow for apps larger than 50MB to be sold in the Marketplace and it’s too “fragmented” for game developers.