Aparantly game engines cost $400,000 - does this make sense to you?

[Squilliam]

"We heard and confirmed that some state of the art engines such as Doom, Unreal or Cry engines will set you back at least $400.000.

The price really depends on the customer but it goes around this number. The engine is the first step in game development and it is usually cheaper to buy a state of the art engine, rather than making one on your own.

It takes years to develop a good engine and smaller developers and bigger publishers are just making the move and buying these engines, that lets them make some great looking games.

Developers also needs at least two years to finish the game, and time to market is really critical point as you want to catch the momentum of the pre-Xmas shopping spree, especially if you have a highly anticipated title.

We can only say we salute all developers and engineers that make games and hardware that we need, as life would be boring without you guys. Thank you. "

Linky

According to Fuddyzilla the cost is $400,000 for a game engine. This doesn't make sense to me, I thought they were much much more expensive than that. There has to be some other catch like a % of revenue/profit going to the engine developers or expensive technical support or something.

If Epic has 30 engine sales, that would be 12,000,000 in revenue strictly speaking, which doesn't make sense as they would have earned 10* that amount just from Gears of War 1.

 

[Akumajou]

I always wondered about this too.

Was there not royalty fees as well, specially if the game became a huge hit that the game dev/pub would have to pay the 3d engine dev royalty fees.

Was this not what happened with Half Life 1?

 

[dobwal]

Makes sense to me especially under the assumption its $400,000 per title (maybe even per port as the 360 engine is somewhat different than the PS3 version) not per dev. I could see royalties if there was something patented in a third party engine with no easy workaround. That being said, if third party engines charged too much for a license, devs would just code their own engines to save costs.

Furthermore, Epic has way more than 30 licensees for the U3E. They have like 7 0r 8 licensees of U3E for just CG animation including major studios like Warner Bros and Sony Pictures. Some colleges and unversities licenses the engine for educational purposes. They have closer to 70-90 titles thats been dev'd using the engine or still currently in development.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

UE3 was tooted at $1 million way back when.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

State of the art engines cost way more than 400K; AFAIK even UE3's 1 million dollars are only a base and there's also a ~5% royalty per title sold.

 

[dobwal]

Unreal Engine 2 Licensing Terms
Representing years of development and powering numerous best-selling titles on multiple platforms, the Unreal Engine 2 technology is available for license on a per-platform basis. Three platforms are available: PC, Xbox, and PlayStation2?.

A PC platform license is only required if you intend to ship a retail PC game. If you are developing a console-only title, you may freely use the PC code for development, testing and for its back-end game-server components (for multiplayer games). Note that a PC license includes the right to ship your game on all personal computer operating systems, including Windows and Linux, as well as MacOS? X; by paying once for the PC platform license you may ship on any or all of these operating systems at no additional cost.


Royalty-Bearing License - For retail console & PC products
A non-refundable, non-recoupable license fee is due on execution of the agreement. The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.

Unreal Engine 3 Licensing Terms
Unreal Engine 3 is available for license now, and is aimed at game developers who are targeting next-generation consoles such as Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, as well as DirectX? 10-based PCs. Several Unreal Engine 3 projects are already underway; however, pricing has not been publicly announced. If you are looking to develop a next-generation game, please contact us at licensing@epicgames.com to begin discussions.

This is from Epic's site its the licensing terms of the U2E engine so U3E is probably on line with what Laa Yosh stated.

 

[Nesh]

I believe that once a developer acquires an engine, that engine is considered to be an investment that will be used for more than one project.

Taking that into account, since the engine is a fixed cost, using that engine for various projects creates economies of scale. Thus the cost per title is less.

 

[dobwal]

I believe that once a developer acquires an engine, that engine is considered to be an investment that will be used for more than one project.

Taking that into account, since the engine is a fixed cost, using that engine for various projects creates economies of scale. Thus the cost per title is less.

I think there may be an additional licensing fee for each additional game. If Epic is going to charge per platform, I highly doubt that there is no additional charges for using it for future projects.

 

[Nesh]

Except from the royalties they will get from each project they want extra fees for every additional project that will use it?

It sounds as if they are skinning their clients alive!!

 

[fearsomepirate]

And I thought $20K software licenses for CFD tools were obscene.

 

[Barbarian]

I think there may be an additional licensing fee for each additional game. If Epic is going to charge per platform, I highly doubt that there is no additional charges for using it for future projects.

I don't know specifically about UE3, but other engines in the past (RenderWare, FMOD etc) used the model "Flat Fee Per SKU Per Year".

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Except from the royalties they will get from each project they want extra fees for every additional project that will use it?

It sounds as if they are skinning their clients alive!!

Business is business, the licence is for one title only. Epic's not a charity organization...

 

[_phil_]

You can buy UE3 With or without royalties .It goes from low fixed price with high % royalties ,to high fixed price (>1 million $) with no royalties at all.For one title.

And it says nothing about the price of an engine.UE is a toolset as much as an engine.And support must be counted in too.

 

[Graham]

Yup.
These prices are 'normal'.

From a risk&reward point of view, it does make sense though. With your average 'AAA' game taking 2-3 years, $400k really is quite insignificant. If it means more productive programmers and artists, it should save you money. Realistically it's only 4 man-years wages and overhead. Eg; for a 3 year project with 40 staff this is a pittance.

However for small developers it's out of the question. This is where 'lesser' engines like Torque, Gamebryo, etc find their place. With lower and more flexible licensing fees and arrangements. Although it's arguable they only provide the foundation to start on, where as the likes of unreal are intended as a complete development platform right through the pipeline.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There's no way that a cutting edge engine would only cost $400K. That's like, the cost of 4 programmer man-years, noone would develop their own engine if you could buy UE3 for that.

 

[ban25]

UE3 is quite a bit more, i.e. $650k+ with a fairly significant royalty...

 

[Raptor]

Have you even inquired about the actual cost of an engine on the EPIC or Id site? They pretty much lay it out for you including the up front cost and the royalty payments. And I don't recall EPIC charging anywhere near $400,000 for UE3.

 

[ban25]

And I thought $20K software licenses for CFD tools were obscene.

It's all relative. $20k per seat for a tool used by an engineer costing $150k/year is reasonable. $1M in engine licensing for a game with a $20M+ budget is also reasonable.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Have you even inquired about the actual cost of an engine on the EPIC or Id site? They pretty much lay it out for you including the up front cost and the royalty payments.

Their most recent engines' prices are not published on the net.