What makes it that way, though?
The Unreal menu was stylistically similar to it, but nobody whined about it being consolified back then.
I do agree that the UI needs a bit of changing, but not because it's consolified, but because it has a poor design flow and less options than previous games expectations were set.
The Unreal menu was normal for that time, PC games of around then and earlier had menu's like that, it was the norm, hence there was no reason to complain.
But alot has happened since then, and that menu would not recive a warm welcome thease days..
The UT2kX menu's are a bit on the verge though, i can see why some have called them conzolized, they do look a bit like the menu's you usually see in console games, but they work differently, they work very well for the PC, and they have all the stuff you expect of PC menu's, and thus, i for one do not considder them consilized.
UT3's however, i do considder consolized, and it is a bunch of things that conspire to give me that impression:
* The way the interface works for one seems very gamepad freindly, and not all that freindly for a mouse, how you select items on the main menu is a prime example.
* There are only few choices on every screen, and in big text, this is usually done in console menu's because it is easy to use on a TV that is farther away, but there is no reason for it on the PC, where it is better to have fewer menu's with more options.
* Lack of advanced features, this is normal on consoles because the games do not need tweaking, but they do on the PC, a pair of sliders is not what we are used to or want.
* Lack of options overall, again normal in many console games, as they often aim at a more casual gamer, and it helps to keep the number of menu's down and make things easier, tweaking thease things with a gamepad can be a pain afterall, but it is not cool on the PC, where it is so easy to have thease things in very few menu's, and easy to tweak them.
And really, all of this is perfectly in tune with the things Epic have admitted, it really does feel like they where in a big hurry, and just took the menu system they had made for the console, and tweaked it as much as they could to make it work on the PC before the game was rushed out the door, and that is what they said happened (though they never outright admitted that the game was rushed, they did admitt it indirectly by admitting that the PC UI was something they had to toss togeather in a hurry before the game went gold).
But none of it is uniform, some menu's seem more affected than others.
Anyway, more on topic here:
Epic has in the past given us excellent support for the past Unreal games, lots of patches, lots of free bonus content, their track record there is well above average!
But this release is nothing like thouse that came before it.. it is the first multi-platform UT title, and it shows, since they have to work on 3 different versions of the game and not just one this time, support has been very slow, hell, they are still working on the Xbox version, that has not even been released yet, so alot of their resources are tied up in that, they are not a very big company.
What that means for the future though, i have no idea, maybe we will still get all the goodies, just slower, maybe the pace will quicken after they release the Xbox version, or maybe there will be less support because its more work now, maybe there will be more things that get released platform exclusive, maybe the fact that they have two flagship titles now (the other beeing Gears of War) means they will produce less for UT this time, who knows? Epic has certainly not told us anything.
So i dont really know what to tell you, outlook uncertain.