It's official now, Unreal Tournament 2007 has been announced by Epic and Midway. Steve Allison over at Midway is so excited he decided to refer to the UT series as 'one of, if not the greatest multiplayer PC franchise ever' which is well... bold!

We feel confident that Unreal Tournament 2007 will deliver on Epic's promise to gamers to develop only the highest quality and most innovative titles using our cutting-edge Unreal Engine 3 technology," said Mark Rein, vice president and co-founder, Epic Games. "Unreal fans should rest assured that UT2007 will indeed raise the bar for not only the UT franchise but for all FPS titles, PC or console."

IGN offers some new details for UT2007 and speculates on what's to come. Epic told 'em the shift from this game to the last will be a much larger move than from 2K3 to 2K4.

GameSpot has been updated with a preview of Unreal Tournament 2007, which is now confirmed as the title of the game. To be released next year, the game will be like a mix between the original UT and UT2004, with gameplay improvements based on fan feedback. GameSpot's preview includes four screenshots, as well as a video interview with Epic's Mike Capps. Here's a bit about the Unreal Engine 3 tech used in the game

The engine will have support for advanced special effects, including high dynamic range lighting and bump offset mapping--which is an advanced form of lighting that can make a completely flat surface appear to have protruding features, like a brick wall built from jagged, uneven stones--and an all-new physics engine powered by Ageia's Novodex technology. "We've never been able to do an avalanche in-game before," says Epic president Mike Capps, referring to both the simulated mountain avalanche in this year's GDC demo and to the sorts of effects you'll see in the game.

Over at 1UP you can find the Computer Gaming World preview of the next Unreal Tournament game, which was previously only available in their magazine. The article is chock full of quotes from the guys at Epic, and there are a few screenshots as well. Unreal Tournament 2007 (or whatever it might end up being called) will include new game modes, drop some old ones, and will also have an improved singleplayer experience.

"The original Unreal Tournament was on the threshold of being a great game," Steve says. "If we had done 2K4 without having to feel kind of in the box of what we had started in 2K3, I think it would have been a much better game than it was. We think there's a lot we can improve. This is a completely new game, new engine. All the code is really being rewritten. No assets from UT2K4 appear in here again. In fact, in terms of how the games have evolved, this is more of a leap, I would say, than the original Unreal Tournament to UT2K4."