Zio, you have to realize that people aren't just comparing the LOOKS of the game like you do/are. We look at the performance of the game WITH the looks. The only verison of Unreal that had good performance (besides its original), was UT2k3. U2 and UT2k4 all run like shit. All you have to do is go look at some benchmarks, or hell... play the games and watch your fps. The games barely even run stable fps (on killer systems), let alone high/steady/smooth.
The Unreal engine is a perfect example at how much advertising and eye-candy appeals to the retarded masses. People in general, are stupid.
As for the Unreal3 engine, it's not even out yet. All I can say is this... go check out some progressive benchmarks of games like Quake3 (engine), Half-Life2, FarCry, UT2k3, and UT2k4. All of which have great increases in fps with new technology/hardware, except for UtT2k4/U2. Even UT2k3's performance goes up when a new graphics card/CPU comes out. UT2k4/Unreal2 is the one game that NEVER has any real performance increase, no matter what super upgrade the computer recieved.
Sorry, but that's not a "great engine". That's a piece of shit. And that bad karma carries over to the next in the series; Unreal3. I guess we'll all have to wait and see though...