PS5 == Unreal Engine ;)

[Clukos]

I almost thought Kena: Bridge of Spirits was using UE5 it looked soo good

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I didn’t Find Unity any easier. But the market place in UE is pretty solid. I haven’t checked unity in a while. I don't necessarily have a preference though, I suppose, there's a little more in UE4 that I can leverage, that I fear I might have to build in Unity. But i could be entirely wrong.

I keep seeing issues with Blueprint come up and UE can be horrendously slow in that regard, though I have no UE experience. Unity keeps things simple for simple games, but the moment you want to do something outside the norm, you've a lot of work to do. The GameObject system does my head in as it causes all sorts of physics responses between objects and children you don't want. The diea of filtering them by layer is too simple, and in the end I basically have to do a lot of the tests manually, but at least Unity now has "perform a collider overlap/cast test" functions.

The lack of default object pooling is also mind-numbing, but with entities that's not necessary. Unity has definitely improved a huge amount in the past couple of years and I think it's poised to become radically better, but it's not there. I also don't know what their networking is. They had a new DOTS based networking example not that long ago that I'll look into, but I don't think their networking stack is complete and field tested yet.

At least Unity are making plenty of cash and can ride out Epic's AA+ appeal to get to a position where they can compete. Perhaps the software engines is where the new console wars should be fought? Maybe we should ditch the snorefest MS and Sony sides with their lame, copycat x86 systems, and side with either Unity or Unreal and fly the banners for DOTS/Blueprint? I'm pretty damned sure my engine of choice is way better than your engine of choice!

 

[dobwal]

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.

I think unreal engine 2 cost $750k if you wanted to avoid royalties. It dropped to $350k with royalties. And those cost were per platform.

For Unreal 3 those costs jumped into the millions.

However, Epic dumped that model for Unreal 4. Initially charging $19 a month plus 5% gross revenue over $3000 per quarter. Now it’s just 5% once over a million. And that 5% isn’t limited to game sales. It’s 5% on DLC, micro transactions, ad revenue or just about any revenue the game generates outside of ancillary products like t-shirts, action figures or media (movies). Wanna kickstart a title? Epic wants a cut of that action too.

Previously you started millions in the hole if you were going to produce multiple ports. Now, that upfront cost is gone but you may want to front your own engine for sequels if your franchise turns into something that can garner more than 1 million in unit sales at full retail.

If 2K had used UE4 for GTA 5, it would of cost them $300-$400 million. LOL.

 

[Xbat]

Previously you started millions in the hole if you were going to produce multiple ports. Now, that upfront cost is gone but you may want to front your own engine for sequels if your franchise turns into something that can garner more than 1 million in unit sales at full retail.

This is what confuses me why the Coalition uses Unreal? Surely it gets quite expensive when your game sells 5 million plus. Unless there's a once off price for certain customers.

 

[iroboto]

I keep seeing issues with Blueprint come up and UE can be horrendously slow in that regard, though I have no UE experience. Unity keeps things simple for simple games, but the moment you want to do something outside the norm, you've a lot of work to do. The GameObject system does my head in as it causes all sorts of physics responses between objects and children you don't want. The diea of filtering them by layer is too simple, and in the end I basically have to do a lot of the tests manually, but at least Unity now has "perform a collider overlap/cast test" functions.

The lack of default object pooling is also mind-numbing, but with entities that's not necessary. Unity has definitely improved a huge amount in the past couple of years and I think it's poised to become radically better, but it's not there. I also don't know what their networking is. They had a new DOTS based networking example not that long ago that I'll look into, but I don't think their networking stack is complete and field tested yet.

At least Unity are making plenty of cash and can ride out Epic's AA+ appeal to get to a position where they can compete. Perhaps the software engines is where the new console wars should be fought? Maybe we should ditch the snorefest MS and Sony sides with their lame, copycat x86 systems, and side with either Unity or Unreal and fly the banners for DOTS/Blueprint? I'm pretty damned sure my engine of choice is way better than your engine of choice!

blueprint system works fine, mainly.
but it's slow... things are slow in unreal. If you try to do too much, I think that's where unreal falls apart. See PUBG

 

[Inuhanyou]

Seems like the 7th gen all over again. If its easy to use and provides good results why not. With the ssd tech and such in the new consoles the data streaming issue of UE is pretty much solved so no fear of those carry over issues from ue3 and ue4 here

 

[cheapchips]

This is what confuses me why the Coalition uses Unreal? Surely it gets quite expensive when your game sells 5 million plus. Unless there's a once off price for certain customers.

Epic do a Custom Game Licence. I'd imagine that's what MS and Sony both use. Call for more info!



https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/get-now/games

 

[cheapchips]

Edge have an UE5 article in Aug issue. Not sure there's much new info on the technical side but there's some interesting interview snippets. While Karis had been mulling virtual geometry for a decade, it's in the last 3 years that he thought of a specific implementation and was given time to it. Low latency SSD's are the enabler and Sony were there first talking about that, which seems to have led to the demo hitting PS5 first.

 

[liams]

List-wars (not that you're talking about Sony in-house anyways)

Xbox Game Studios

Current

• Double Fine - Psychonauts 2
  
• Ninja Theory - Hellblade 2 & Project Mara
  
• Obsidian Entertainment - Grounded
• Playground Games - next-game using UE4 (job listing)
  
• Rare - Everwild (TBA)

Known to use UE on last title

• Coalition - duh!
  
• Compulsion Games - Contrast/We Happy Few
• Mojang - Minecraft Dungeons
  
• InXile Entertainment - Bard's Tale 4 (Wasteland 3 uses Unity, however)
• Undead Labs - State of Decay

Kinda nutty.

I know this is a bit of a necro post, but I wonder if microsoft has some killer deal on unreal engine licensing? Maybe wrapped up in their purchased of the gears of war ip

I am hopeful that idtech will become microsofts general purpose engine moving forward (into the far future, not talking about the games already in development), mostly because I want unreal engine to have a genuine competition in the "AAA" third party engine space. (where unity it typically for smaller projects, although that does seem to be changing). Hopefully if microsoft does go down that path they will also license out idtech to third parties, which based on several lead programmers from id joining microsofts gaming vertical team, suggests that they may indeed be going down that route