PS5 == Unreal Engine ;)

I wonder how much of unreality engine's success is due to their licencing policies? This one seems like a big deal for small teams

Alongside the reveal of Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games today also announced a change to the pricing of Unreal Engine. Previously the cost to use the engine for building games was a 5% royalty on gross revenue of the game. Now Epic says it will waive the royalties for the first $1 million in revenue, and then resume the 5% fee from there. This is a permanent change and applies retroactively to revenue from January 1st, 2020.
https://www.roadtovr.com/unreal-engine-royalty-free-first-1-million-revenue/

5% isn't that much money but it's a lot less hassle book keeping wise. Once you pay something there is some real sales going on.
 
It's also very, very proven. If you want to create an AA+ game, there are so many successful UE games out there, it's basically a given you can use it to do what you want. Unity has struggled to prove itself for larger games, and the other options are far less well known. How much time do you want to spend researching engines before settling down to create your game?
 
Yea we are seeing similar convergence on MS side towards UE as well.

it seems like the game world is settling down on unreal and unity. Crytek is sort of out there. Not doing too great in that market. Not sure if ID tech is free to use. Game maker continues to see some success and a couple others that are dedicated towards sprite style games.

Ubisoft has its own several engines they continue to update. But I think very few companies will be rolling new engines enlighten of these now. I think Ubisoft and 343i are the only ones that made completely new engines from scratch in the last while. Speaking of Ubi, expecting an announcement from them in July. Not sure if they will be announcing on MS stage or their own, but the pressure is on for them to finish this title for launch early 2021.

unity and epic are hiring massive amounts of talent and have significant investment and pricing methods that are attractive for devs
 
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Do you remember the old days when any single game add it's bespoken engine, and unreal was considered cheap and stinky?
 
I wonder how much of unreality engine's success is due to their licencing policies? This one seems like a big deal for small teams


https://www.roadtovr.com/unreal-engine-royalty-free-first-1-million-revenue/

5% isn't that much money but it's a lot less hassle book keeping wise. Once you pay something there is some real sales going on.
Well, 5% of your total revenues (not profits!) isn't exactly cheap. It's like having a very, very expensive shareholder who wants a HUGE dividend on all your earnings, if I understand how this deal works correctly. I'd understand 5% of the profits, but rev? That's huge. Or maybe I'm just cheap.
 
Well, 5% of your total revenues (not profits!) isn't exactly cheap. It's like having a very, very expensive shareholder who wants a HUGE dividend on all your earnings, if I understand how this deal works correctly. I'd understand 5% of the profits, but rev? That's huge. Or maybe I'm just cheap.
5% of 1M is 50K.
Seems reasonable honestly considering how fast one can get up and go. When you’re clocking multi billions of revenue like GTAV, you’re punching yourself :)
 
5% of 1M is 50K.
Seems reasonable honestly considering how fast one can get up and go. When you’re clocking multi millions of revenue like GTAV.m, you’re punching yourself :)
And it's half a mill if you make $10M. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, of course Epic needs to get paid, but 5% of your REVENUES is a lot. Don't make me get my accounting goggles out!
 
And it's half a mill if you make $10M. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, of course Epic needs to get paid, but 5% of your REVENUES is a lot. Don't make me get my accounting goggles out!
I think typically IIRC if you license big time you’re looking at several million to use. Like 1-6 million. I believe the older methods was pay per user etc.

So provided your titles aren’t making more than that after 5% you’re saving money I guess. But runaway success will be brutal. Which might be why those studios will use in-house engines I think knowing they are going to sell blockbuster amounts.
 
I mean, I really don't know what the average profits for a game are, but in many industries 5% is your profits, if you even make a profit! So to spend that - as a flat rate - on the engine is not little, that's all I'm saying.
 
Didn't mean to derail this thread. Sorry for that. So let me push even more to the wrong direction. Cut steam/apple store/google store/... far exceeds the 5% epic wants for their engine.

From my POV it would be no brainer to use unreal for some small game I develop. If I have to pay something then I'm already successful. If I flop terribly I don't have to figure out 5% of small number to pay to epic, optimize my taxes,... Just makes life easy(ier).
 
Depends on speed to market then. I mean you could build your own engine like Star Citizen but do you want to do that fulltime for 5 years or more before even spending any time on gameplay?

Also as manux said, the other game stores will take 30% of your revenue straight up.
 
I've plumped for using Unity for my own grotesque attempts at creation, but I've dragged my heels for so long getting on with properly learning it, and Unreal is now so ubiquitous and accessible that maybe that was a mistake.

Plus, C# doesn't have pointers. I miss pointers.

Otoh, I get to cheer for team sebbbi.
 
Unity is changing towards DOTS. I'm very tempted to look at that for my next project although I don't really need it, just because I find I think more data-oriented than object-oriented. Between DOTS and the new render stacks, it may start making roads into AA+ games. I think it's currently viewed as the mobile-cross-platform engine though and they need a couple of a big showcases to prove it.
 
Didn't mean to derail this thread. Sorry for that. So let me push even more to the wrong direction. Cut steam/apple store/google store/... far exceeds the 5% epic wants for their engine.

From my POV it would be no brainer to use unreal for some small game I develop. If I have to pay something then I'm already successful. If I flop terribly I don't have to figure out 5% of small number to pay to epic, optimize my taxes,... Just makes life easy(ier).
Go one step further, epic charges less on their store as welll. So the cost of store + engine is still less than the 30% cut.
 
The upcoming multiplatform OddWorld may be what they're (Unity) hoping for as a showcase.
 
I've plumped for using Unity for my own grotesque attempts at creation, but I've dragged my heels for so long getting on with properly learning it, and Unreal is now so ubiquitous and accessible that maybe that was a mistake.

Plus, C# doesn't have pointers. I miss pointers.

Otoh, I get to cheer for team sebbbi.
Eh I chose unreal. It seems more robust for small devs trying to get into 3D work.
 
And it's half a mill if you make $10M. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, of course Epic needs to get paid, but 5% of your REVENUES is a lot. Don't make me get my accounting goggles out!
It's still cheaper than creating your own engine from scratch. ;) As others say, Apple, Google, and the console companies take 30% of your revenue, from day one. Epic take 5% on their store. They can offer a far bigger engineer base for creating and maintaining their engines too. No-one short of an EA, Ubi or MS/Sony could create and sustain a bleeding-edge engine.
 
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