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Play4Fun on 09 March 2012
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zarx said:
Play4Fun said:

It seem important to Epic that next gen hardware is super-powerful. It would ensure alot of demand for UE4 instead of devs just sticking with UE3 because it can do all they really need.

They want to dominate next gen with an engine that others can't keep up with like they did this gen. They don't want guys like Crytek  moving up the ladder even more.

Also, Ipad isn't a  threat to consoles hardware-wise or software -wise.


there is no real business incentice to sell UE4 over UE3 as they sell it as a license and on a royalty bassed business model for indies, they are contracted to give developers updated engines, and they want indies and learing institutions to get their current tech. And super powerful hardware gives competitors like Crytech more chance to catch up not less as there will be far more room to inovate in the graphics tech with new hardware. Hell Crytech are pushing for more powerful consoles than Epic are, you should see their wishlist with "At least 8GB RAM" 3 GPUs and an 8 core CPU.

Unreal engine wasn't successful because it was the "most powerful" they were just the only ones agressively pushing licensed engines, no one else was really doing it before Epic made it big. id and Valve let people license their engines but didn't actively try and push it and didn't support it they just gave devs the source and demanded a fee and most devs before this gen built a new engine for every game they made. Epic came along and by pushing it into learning institutions and by offering it to developers at a "cheap" rate while also keeping their tech at the same level as prepriatary engines that other studios were making combined with ever incressing costs captured the market.

They will be tailoring UE4 to next gen consoles no matter how powerful they are.

Part of UE3's advantage was that it was the only engine really capable of taking advantage of "the cutting edge" hardware in the beginning and that enabled them to dominate in the engine licensing market while the other engines were still trying to catch up.

It's pretty much their business to make cutting edge easier to program for. They need a market where the cutting edge is wanted. They didn't push MS to   512mb for their own good. They did it in their own interest.

Some of their recent comments regarding next gen consoles give the impression that they have seen the next gen hardware targets and are trying to pressure the console makers for more. Their hyperbolic statement about Apple "beating" them if they don't go cutting edge and Apple using a similar model of bleeding edge hardware similar to MS and Sony, which is totally untrue, the Samaritan processing requirement analysis , another recent accasion where they said they were  trying to show console makers a game could be made on par with Samaritan in an affordable manner, just solidifies that impression.

They said at GDC that "if devs were making a game for next-gen systems that you'd also want running on current systems, you would still go with UE3 and try for Samaritan-level sizzle in the next-gen versions of the game. But if you were going purely next-gen, you'd go with UE4."

They WANT Sony and MS to have hardware that requires UE4 for high end development. It's in their interest that their new engine is adopted next gen as much as possible after all.

Why is it Crytek seem to have a more conservative expectation of next gen in their CryEngine 3 GDC 2012 demo while Epic are pushing for something like Samaritan and beyond?

Cutting edge would benefit Epic and give them an advantage over their engine-licensing competitors. The reason they are pushing Sony and MS so much is for their sake. They want to maintain their dominance.