Thanks VaxoP for this bit of info.
Mark Rein (the guy from Epic Games Inc.) posted another statement over at the Infogrames forum. It seems we have to wait just a little bit longer for the UT2003 demo.
"Sorry for not being around much lately with updates. I"m working on a whole bunch of things that need to be done before UT2003 (the full version, not the demo) can go out the door including, but not limited to:
1. Trying to close some deals that will hold special interest to UT2003 mod makers. Once these are done there will be some cool announcements.
2. Working closely with video card companies who are coming out with awesome new products this fall and want to use UT2003 to show them off.
3. Creating and approving a bunch of marketing / promo / box artwork / logos for all three games (UT2003, UC and U2).
4. Concluding a bunch of separate UT2003-related legal agreements for things like; the sound library we"re using, the end user license agreements for demo & full game, and clearances for various logos that have to go on the box.
That is all in addition to my normal Epic management duties. These things all take precedence over marketing and PR because I don"t want to be the bottleneck that delays the release of the game.
Digital Extreme and Epic have decided to each take responsibility for one of the two games we"ve been working on together. Having one team work on each game in one location should help them both get done sooner and be more differentiated. Epic will finish UT2003 while Digital Extremes will concentrate solely on Unreal Championship for Xbox. DE will be specifically working on the unique features and content going into Unreal Championship while we put the finishing touches on UT2003.
There has been a huge amount of polish work done to the game since my last update especially in the area of AI where Steve Polge has made AI that is vastly improved over that in UT. Infogrames is shipping a bunch of testers here next week to help us shake out the game a little harder.
In my estimation we"re still more than two weeks away from shipping the demo. I know this might be disappointing to many of you eagerly waiting for the demo but as soon as we think we"re 5-7 days away I"ll let you know. I thought we"d be done with the demo by now but I underestimated. My apologies for that."