By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Should Nintendo use Unreal Engine 4 and Unity in more of their games?

siebensus4 said:
I don't know one single game which uses UE4 and runs in 60fps or even stabile 30fps on Switch. Abzu, Snake Pass, Octopath Traveler had bad and countless framerate droppings, Rime was almost unplayable. So.... no. If Nintendo don't get their Yoshi game run in constant 60fps at 576p, I think it's almost impossible to use this engine properly on Switch.

You also have to keep in mind, a lot of early UE4 games on Switch were developed with an earlier version of the engine, Snake Pass was even developed before the Switch had full UE4 support. Thus, problems do creep up with hardware as new and unique as the Switch. But, I'd say things will get better. Dragon Quest XI for example, looks gorgeous on Switch, even with its visuals toned down from PS4, and it seems to run at a consistent frame-rate.

Scoobes said:
Take Bioware as an example of a developer using a third-party (OK, not entirely third-party, but not developed in-house at Bioware) engine that's not appropriate to their needs. Their last few games have taken forever to develop and have been sub-par by their standards. A lot of that is because they used the Battlefield engine and had to do a load of custom work to make it suitable for their RPGs.

Blame EA for that one. They've mandated every title they publish to use Frostbite for some god-forsaken reason. But EA seems to forget that an engine desinged for a Shooter, doesn't necessarily translate to other genres.



Around the Network
siebensus4 said:
I don't know one single game which uses UE4 and runs in 60fps or even stabile 30fps on Switch. Abzu, Snake Pass, Octopath Traveler had bad and countless framerate droppings, Rime was almost unplayable. So.... no. If Nintendo don't get their Yoshi game run in constant 60fps at 576p, I think it's almost impossible to use this engine properly on Switch.

pretty sure dragonal fighterz is 1080p 60fps on switch and it's unreal engine 4



Nuvendil said:
MTZehvor said:
Unreal Engine is kind of garbage, so...ideally no. At least not for anything that demands high framerate/graphical fidelity.

Not well informed enough about Unity to say for it.

Unreal is very capable.   Dragon Ball FighterZ is UE4 (and works wonderfully on Switch too), Dragon Quest XI is as well.  So is Kingdom Hearts III.  And a number of other games.

Both DQ and KH can only hit 30 FPS consistently on consoles to my knowledge. KH's "unlocked" mode often has serious frame dropping problems on standard consoles; Pro and X handle it fine but standard PS4 and XBO have lots of documented issues, and that's with hitting relatively tame resolution standards of 900 and 720p respectively. And the Switch is technically less impressive than either base XBO or PS4.

This isn't to say that it's impossible to make good looking/well performing games with Unreal (Arc did a fantastic job with DBFZ), but all the evidence in the world points to it being a substantial handicap if you're aiming to make games with high resolution output or high framerate. A reasonable point of comparison imo would be looking at Devil May Cry 4, which ran on MT Framework, and going to the DmC: Devil May Cry reboot, which used Unreal. DmC launched in 2013 and had numerous problems with textures popping in/out, could only manage 30 FPS on consoles, and frequently fell below even that on PS3. Conversely, DMC4 ran on MT framework and was locked at 60 FPS with no such texture problems despite launching five years earlier.

One of the big problems is that UE (especially UE4) is very resource hungry, and devs need to put in more effort on optimization to make sure that extra assets aren't going to tank performance. Optimization is important for all games, but especially so for Unreal titles, and it's an extra layer of work/chance for things to go wrong, especially if your system is (relatively) underpowered like the Switch.



siebensus4 said:
I don't know one single game which uses UE4 and runs in 60fps or even stabile 30fps on Switch. Abzu, Snake Pass, Octopath Traveler had bad and countless framerate droppings, Rime was almost unplayable. So.... no. If Nintendo don't get their Yoshi game run in constant 60fps at 576p, I think it's almost impossible to use this engine properly on Switch.

Hellblade and Octopath meet their 30fps target almost permanently on Switch, according to DF's testing.



I'm leaning on a big no.

Primarily because numerous projects have been underwhelming on the superior PS4 and X1. Meanwhile the Switch games using have low resolutions.

I like UE3. Remember how great Batman looked on UE3?



Recently Completed
River City: Rival Showdown
for 3DS (3/5) - River City: Tokyo Rumble for 3DS (4/5) - Zelda: BotW for Wii U (5/5) - Zelda: BotW for Switch (5/5) - Zelda: Link's Awakening for Switch (4/5) - Rage 2 for X1X (4/5) - Rage for 360 (3/5) - Streets of Rage 4 for X1/PC (4/5) - Gears 5 for X1X (5/5) - Mortal Kombat 11 for X1X (5/5) - Doom 64 for N64 (emulator) (3/5) - Crackdown 3 for X1S/X1X (4/5) - Infinity Blade III - for iPad 4 (3/5) - Infinity Blade II - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Infinity Blade - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Wolfenstein: The Old Blood for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Origins for X1 (3/5) - Uncharted: Lost Legacy for PS4 (4/5) - EA UFC 3 for X1 (4/5) - Doom for X1 (4/5) - Titanfall 2 for X1 (4/5) - Super Mario 3D World for Wii U (4/5) - South Park: The Stick of Truth for X1 BC (4/5) - Call of Duty: WWII for X1 (4/5) -Wolfenstein II for X1 - (4/5) - Dead or Alive: Dimensions for 3DS (4/5) - Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite for X1 (3/5) - Halo Wars 2 for X1/PC (4/5) - Halo Wars: DE for X1 (4/5) - Tekken 7 for X1 (4/5) - Injustice 2 for X1 (4/5) - Yakuza 5 for PS3 (3/5) - Battlefield 1 (Campaign) for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Syndicate for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: MW Remastered for X1 (4/5) - Donkey Kong Country Returns for 3DS (4/5) - Forza Horizon 3 for X1 (5/5)

Around the Network

I dont see why not. Yoshi's Wooly World looks fantastic. As Long as the games are good, it doesnt matter what engine they use.



Not sure why should they.
In case of some massive expansion of their dev capabilities it would make sense, in short term perhaps, since lot of people they would need to hire know how to work in those engines.
Other than that, not sure why would any big publisher use 3rd party engine.



curl-6 said:

Hellblade and Octopath meet their 30fps target almost permanently on Switch, according to DF's testing.

I played Octopath 140 hours and there were many, many framedrops I could see with my own eyes. 30fps is still unacceptable for a 2D pixel graphic game and even more unacceptable for a company which made many 60fps RPGs back in the 90s. Of course I know it's not the same team within the company... but... you know... it's a shame that they don't pass their experiences on a new team.

Another example is Bloodstained which seems to have a terrible performance on Switch (screen often freezes for about a second). Of course, it always depends on the developers how the game runs. If Dragonball FighterZ has 60fps, then they made a good job. I don't say it's not possible to have a good performance with UE4 on Switch, but most third parties and Indies obviously can't handle it. Programming is always a weak point in small studios. And of course there are also exceptions like Shin'en.



siebensus4 said:
curl-6 said:

Hellblade and Octopath meet their 30fps target almost permanently on Switch, according to DF's testing.

I played Octopath 140 hours and there were many, many framedrops I could see with my own eyes. 30fps is still unacceptable for a 2D pixel graphic game and even more unacceptable for a company which made many 60fps RPGs back in the 90s. Of course I know it's not the same team within the company... but... you know... it's a shame that they don't pass their experiences on a new team.

Another example is Bloodstained which seems to have a terrible performance on Switch (screen often freezes for about a second). Of course, it always depends on the developers how the game runs. If Dragonball FighterZ has 60fps, then they made a good job. I don't say it's not possible to have a good performance with UE4 on Switch, but most third parties and Indies obviously can't handle it. Programming is always a weak point in small studios. And of course there are also exceptions like Shin'en.

Fair, I have only played the demo of Octopath myself, I was just going off Digital Foundry's analysis. It's certainly true that in a lot of cases UE4's features tend to be expensive and result in lower resolutions, though having said that I still consider Yoshi and Hellblade to be two of the most graphically impressive games on Switch in spite of their low res.

Looking ahead, I am interested to see how Dragon Quest 11 and Spyro Reignited turn out on Switch.