not exactly, it would just make life a whole lot easier and cheaper if they get the hard work out of the way sooner rather than later imo.

Especially if the engines are scalable to the PS4

It appears DICE didn't just delve deep into the engine:

"The game uses Epic's Unreal Engine 3 rather than DICE's own Frostbite Engine because the development of Mirror's Edge began before Frostbite's development was complete. Beast, a new lighting system developed by Illuminate Labs in association with DICE, was added to the Unreal Engine in order to accentuate the different art style of Mirror's Edge and allow for the reflection of colours as well as light."

~Wikipedia

So the only reason UE3 was used was because DICE hadn't finished development on their own engine yet. So the decision wasn't based on expense, there just wasn't another option at the time.

They also added a lighting engine to UE3 to create a unqiue look for the game, which is perhaps why it stands out from so many other UE3 games.

This is a BUSINESS, and in BUSINESS the most important thing is ROI, which for fanboys who live on Fantasy Island with Tattoo...that is Return on Investment. That means, whatever you dedicated your limited resources towards, you want the greatest returns...

I understand that. For many devs, creating their own engine must be simply too expensive or challenging.

There has to be some benifit for Sony to be making their own game engines for each game rather then using a middleware engine like UE3 across all their titles.

This doesn't just apply to Sony either, for example DICE in my post above used the UE3 up until their own engine was complete.

I would imagine these benifits are performance and a greater degree of control over development. (Which ties in with the 'unique look' I was talking about.)

Some of the best examples of the UE3 that stand out are Bioshock, Mass Effect and Gears Of War.

Bioshock has a unique style, but it's not a graphical powerhouse by any means. Mass Effect has framerate problems galore, and Gears is made by the company who created the engine.

I'll have to have a more detailed look, but I suspect that most big selling titles, whatever the genre, where on their own engines.

In the end I think in many cases the more innovative developers also create the engine, tools, etc.

GTA, Halo, Gears, MGS, etc are all on their own engines.

Again, there are exceptions, but in many cases use of a middleware engine is either to cut costs or the route for lower tier developers - for example those wanting to put out an FPS and happy to leverage an engine that supports it.

It's about cost vs return - but its not as simple as using someone else's engine means success. It might lower the cost but if the end game is very generic and/or buggy as a result it will likely not sell as well as a much better game with its own engine.

At the end of the day its choice - and ID tech, Unreal engine do let developers chose which approach they want to take. I'll personally tend to favour big titles from companies that understand what they're delivering 'soup to nuts' such as Infinity Ward, Valve, Bungie, Rockstar, etc.

Arguably one of the best FPS for years, Bioshock used a leased engine (Modified Unreal Engine)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock#Game_engine

BioShock uses a highly modified version of the Unreal Engine 2.5 technology used by other previous Irrational Games titles including SWAT 4, and SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate. In an interview at E3 in May 2006, Levine announced a Unreal Engine 3.0 features would also be integrated. Levine emphasized the enhanced water effects, which he claimed would be very impressive: "We've hired a water programmer and water artist, just for this game, and they're kicking ass and you've never seen water like this."^[

This isn't a poor developer that chose this route it was a smart business decision to cut costs and have a solid base to spend more time building features.  Stalker is a example of a game where the developer decided to build their own engine and as a result the game almost became vapourware getting it to work as they wanted.  New engines are a double edged sword, they're fantastic if they work well but if you hit problems then they become an albatross around the neck of a project which is why leased engines are relatively risk free from a technical standpoint.

Neither method is right or wrong and both can produce sub standard games or AAA titles. 

That's more or less what I said, although I'd note that:

Bioshock did not look as good as Epic titles nonetheless, nor did it 'handle' quite as well - one thing I do believe, based on what I've seen, is no game based on licensed technology has ever looked better nor played quite as well as games based on the companies own tech.  It had great art design but the textures, character models, etc were below the best that engine can deliver

In you look at the averages, most great games were built on specific technology rather than licenced technology.  Gears for example for me is much more technically acomplished than Bioshock.

Like I said, licencing can produce good results, but it can very easily produce cookie cutter genre games like the recent Turok, Blacksite, etc. etc. all of which were average to poor FPS built on Unreal Engine.  And let's not even go near Too Human...

My personal preference is titles built on tech the developer understands inside out.  If you liked the Bioshock angle check out the article on using Unreal engine in Deus Ex - essentially a direct precursor, to get a really interesting view on the pros and cons faced taking that route.  I quick check for Warren Spector, Deus Ex, Unreal technology should surface it.

I know Reasonable I was just highlighting for those posters who don't look at which games use what engines that there are AAA big sellers out there that use them very well. Don't forget Bioshock is modelled mainly on UE2.5 not 3 so it's not directly comparable to Gears. Also Bioshock had to sacrfice some nicer character models for the variation in environment and enemies. Gears did a very good job of hiding the number of textures it reused, people knew it was happening technically but onscreen it didn't show.

On the flip side of the coin you could argue that some developers concentrate too much on selling a engine at the expense of their games, ID for me are a perfect example of a leading engine developer that have missed the mark when it came to producing some games based on the technology. I think in the vast majority of cases you're correct though that the best games do tend to be built with custom engines from the ground up.

Dont worry.

Uncharted engine has been put to good use and Uncharted 2 is coming out this year. I wouldnt be surprised if they release a new Jak and Daxter game using the Uncharted engine.

Ratchet and Clank, as well as Resistance (both from Insomniac) have been put to good use. How many more Resistance games do you think is appropriate on a console that is not even 3 years old. There's already 2 Resistance games. Then there is 1 Full R&C, R&C: Quest for Booty, and another R&C coming out this winter.

I'm sure we will see KillZone 3 by Q4 2010 now that the engine is fully developed.

If we're talking strictly engine recycling...CAPCOM is the best (or worst, depending how you look at it). They're using the same engine for Lost Planet, Dark Void, and Bionic Commando. All the games will play the same, but with different characters/weapons/environments. They did the same with Resident Evil and Dino Crisis/Devil May Cry as well. CAPCOM recycles very well, but I appreciate Sony's originality.

The deferred rendering engine was used in LBP and KZ2, and will be used in inFamous. KZ2 may have taken it to a new level, but the rendering techniques are the same in those games