Shifty, you're overlooking the obvious point I was trying to make. The engine's R&D cost was omitted when Rein was discussing Gears development total. And Epic isn't going to sell to 3rd parties exactly what UE3.0 cost to develop & optimize, so you're example is flawed.
Interview with Nintendo software engineer Takeshi Shimada (includes Wii GPU question)
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Shifty, you're overlooking the obvious point I was trying to make. The engine's R&D cost was omitted when Rein was discussing Gears development total. And Epic isn't going to sell to 3rd parties exactly what UE3.0 cost to develop & optimize, so you're example is flawed.
The cost of UE3.0 development is recovered many times over in licensing the engine, so it isn't a cost to be born by GeOW. If you're going to factor the cost to create UE3.0 into GeOW, you would have to do the same for all UE3.0 games, as they all required that expense to develop the engine.
I've read that there is a lot more to using third party engines than simply paying for the lisence. Training staff to use it (paying for their time to learn), and modifying the engine for your own needs can add a lot to the cost of using a lisenced engine. I've seen some developers (in the past generation) use this as the reason for staying with in-house technology.
No doubt it was a lot cheaper and easier for Epic to use and fiddle with their own engine that it would be for newcomers.
No doubt it was a lot cheaper and easier for Epic to use and fiddle with their own engine that it would be for newcomers.
Actually, I remember ERP voicing similar thoughts a while back. He said the primary advantage of using a third party engine would be that your artists could start working on the game assets immediately.
