zarx said:
| freebs2 said:
That's completely true but are you sure UE4 will be the completely dominant engine for next-generation consoles? You seem to know this kind of stuff much better than me so I'm genuinely curious.
Back in 2005/2006 the UE3 was the only viable option (I guess) for developers to have an high-end graphics engine, unless they wanted to develop it internally. The only other option was the IdTech 4, which wasn't nearly as good.
Now, it seems to me, there is more competition thanks for Cryengine 3, IdTech 5 and the likes, also it seems to me more publishers are starting to develop their own engine, like Frostbite for EA, Kojima engine for Konami, MT framework 2 for Capcom, etc.etc.
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Nothing is certain but it has the strongest position as it is used in most teaching institutions (Epic were good at giving it to them and providing support) plus most people working in the industry today are familiar with the engine and it's tools etc, plus a lot of developers have brought 5+/3+ year/game licenses to the engine. Cryengine is basically the only real competitior right now as it matches UE for features and actually exededs UE on some areas, is actively supported etc, but from what I have read from developers (mostly indies etc) is that Crytech don't have the same level of suppot as Epic does, and the documentation and guids are not up to the level UE offers. UE has a huge development community and Tim Sweeney (lead engine architect for UE) is aprently very active in it.
Engines like ID tech, MT Framework, Fox engine, Frostbyte etc are prepriatary so only internal developers can use them so while they may reduce UE's marketshare by having big internal games being built on those engines, they are not really directly competing with UE and will never overtake UE for marketshare. And for an interesting example CAPCOM are so protective of MT Framework that they won't even let external developers making games for them use it, for example Lost Planet 3 will be an UE3 game as it's an external dev same with DMC another UE3 CAPCOM game.
There is Unity which has a big indie following as it allows easy cross platform development (supports iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, linux, Vita, PSP, 3DS, Wii, PS3, X360, Flash, web browser) and is very cheap for licensing. But it lacks a lot of advanced features at the moment and will likely fall behind further after UE4, CE4 etc are released next gen.
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