When Epic Games’ VP Mark Rein stated in a recent interview that development on the Xbox 360 version of Unreal Tournament III had not even started yet, uncertainty grew over the fate of the 360 release. Would it face another delay?

Thankfully Rein has cleared up those concerns with a statement he released today:

What I probably should have said was ‘start working on it again.’ We had the game up and running on all three platforms up until last spring. In fact Official Xbox Magazine came out and played the game for a great cover story they did on it. We stopped working on the 360 version so we could concentrate our efforts on shipping the various PC and PS3 versions. Once we get those out of the way, and take some time to enjoy the holidays with our friends and families, we’ll start working on the 360 version again. There’s still a decent bit of work to do. For example we have simple LAN play but no Xbox Live implementation yet and we need to work with Microsoft to figure out how to accommodate mods on their platform.

So, development has already started, but put on hold until the PS3 and PC version is released. You can rest easy now, 360 owners.

Rein: Work on 360′s Unreal Tournament III just on hold [Joystiq]

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