Many AAA game developers have their own bespoke game engine technology e.g. Battfield’s Frostbite engine.
As Unity improves the gap between what Unity can do and these high end AAA engines will diminish. So at some point in the future it could be more cost effective for those companies to use Unity.
The question is what is in the gap between a Frostbite level AAA engine and Unity?
The most important gap is that Unity has to be many things to many people… Frostbite just has to excel in few things for a small list of studios.
Thus you are comparing a general purpose engine with a long list of build targets to a very FPS oriented PC/Console engine.
Don’t think anyone who had access to Frostbite and the resources to work with it (don’t know the toolset, but unless somebody REALLY poured some money into usability I am expecting Unity to trump it when it comes to the usability of the interface), and needed to create a PC or Console FPS would pick Unity over Frostbite… like… ever.
The same could be said for Unreal, really. Maybe even CryEngine, don’t know how that thing compares to Frostbite (I guess not even an obscure inhouse engines toolset can be so crappy in the usability like CryEngine was when I tried).
At the same time Unity and Unreal allow the smaller studios and Indies without access to Publisher inhouse engines, or without the resources to develop their own engine to get within 5% distance of what a similar sized studio can do with an engine like Frostbite, if they know how to optimize their games in Unity or Unreal. Maybe missing on some of the glitz… but then, can a smaller dev really use all that glitz?
Horses for courses really.
Split it in two, do tools in unity, export to native engine, …, PROFIT?
Do you really want that?
It might mean Unity catering really heavily to AAA needs, which might be different than indie needs. It may become a worse engine for you and I then.
I mean unity is too generic as it much work on every platform, so it’s optimized for none (jack of all trades and all of that). AAA is all about that performance bit, they make lemonade by using every possible bit of the lemon as they can. But a second big part of AAA is having pipeline that works flawlessy to have efficient production, it mean creating tools and adapting them for each game every time. Tool make a difference between the failing project and the smooth sailing. The hick is that generally tools are integrated in teh engine to have wysiwyg result, so they would need to integrate unity to their engine as a platform to unify all tools and allow anyone to extend them easily.
Enterprise is not cheap. And as mentioned above, too generic. AAAs require more flexibility, and already are invested in their own tools. In house engines mean they can change core tools on the fly and can also future tech. Given the long time lines for those games, they are often building for platforms a year or two out. It’s just not practical. Or necessary. Unity is perfect for it’s market, it doesn’t need to be a solution for every market.
literally not possible, large studios are very invested in there own tools, and the publishers dont like relying on others. What if a publisher had all of its studios building on Unity for titles that are a few years away from release. Than say Apple or a similar company bought unity, that could destroy a publisher.
Also why would you want this, it could not cater to the need of AAA and indies at the same time, and someone will be left behind if it does.
Let’s not forget that’s exactly what unreal do though, but they are much more focus in AAA games (as they know how to make AAA games and what it implies, unlike some people) and basically sell a starting point to customize. And what’s left is more or less adapter for indies but don’t cover it as much like unity does, it’s more like an opportunity.
That’s a really good point. Aiming at big studios can easily make it unusable to everybody else.
Unreal model has its own issues. IIRC changes to API in unreal engine are more rapid. So something you rely on may end up being refactored or disappear altogether between minor engine releases.
This. Unity’s model/market is clearly successful, not much logic in upending the model to follow a less successful competitor.
They corner different market really, I mean unreal just got big into the Japanese market recently, a market that used to have not invented here syndrome big time, Given that square enix, ie one of the biggest tech leader of this market, start using it (ff7, the new dragon quest). Since teh question is about AAA, I would say unreal got that market better than unity (I mean how did ReCore fare?).
So basically what @zombiegorilla said, each have their core market and expending beyond opportunity might not be worth the cost. AAA is only relevant to unity to sell the dream to indies (see that other thread).
I’m no AAA developer, but I can speculate on what I would want in an engine as one. I might even get close. Here are my top picks:
Purpose built for the game genre. If I’m going to spend five years on a FPS game, I want an FPS engine. More so if I intend to push out sequels every year after that. Same if I was doing open world, or RTS, or whatever. The engine should be built with the specific game type in mind.
Amenable to large teams. The engine shouldn’t require my artists and my designers and my programmers to talk to each other. Heck, my rock texturing team shouldn’t even need to talk to the rock modelling team. Large corporations work best when the work can be effectively segmented between teams.
Single platform. Or at least specialised to the two or three platforms I’m using. If I’m doing a PC game, I don’t want mobile builds, and vice versa. On a console I might even go to something exclusive to the console.
All of these changes would likely make Unity a worse choice for the average indie or solo developer. So I’m hoping Unity doesn’t go that way.
So most of you argue that Unity needs to provide a wide set of platforms.
What if you look at it another way, when in time would Unity have been a go to AAA platform, the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s.
80’s definitely, pixel art arcade games with 3d wireframe standouts like STAR WARS.
90’s things start going 3d
00’s
I think Unity is good up to about here, going into the 2010’s how does it compare, what games and engines outshine what we can do with Unity?
Or where is the gap, is it as some have said engines dedicated to specific genres, although most good game engines cross genres e.g. Frostbite is used in Battlefield FPS games and Need For Speed. Also the Battlefield games include flying, floating and driving vehicles.
So I don’t think the genre specific argument holds up as well as it used to. e.g. modern FPS games also have boats, vehicles, planes and mechs.
Then again what about sports games, just checked FIFA 2017 uses Frostbite 3.
Is Frostbite the game engine Unity should be competing with?
I definitely did not see this kind of universal agreement in previous posts.
In 80/90/00 unity would’ve been unusable due to insanely (for the epoch) high hardware requirements. Well, maybe it would’ve been usable in 00s - in their later half. Maybe.
One of the Forstbite titles I played was dragon age inquisition. Wasn’t very impressed.
When I was thinking about buying mass effect andromeda, I looked into screens, and my impression is that Frostbite 3 was inferior to previously used unreal engine. Might be wrong about it, plus modeling and animation job in that game didn’t help the impression.
In the end I think that competing with this in-house framework would be a bad idea.
–edit–
In the end it is not about engine, but about available people and their skillsets.
So unity should remain unity, without trying to chase every engine on the block.
Anyway, why care about “AAA”? If you don’t have 80 million budget, you are not AAA, so features an AAA would benefit from won’t be very usable for you.
What’s the point?
No. Most of us argued that the ideal AAA engine would support less platforms. Unity is a wide based generic engine. The in house AAA engine is a narrow specific engine.
Flying a plane and controlling a character aren’t hugely different. But you don’t see Assasians Creed style parkour in a FPS game. Nor do you see Kerball style docking. Or Pond Wars style 2D wave mechanics. The variety of games that can be produced in Unity is immense, and far more then is required by any AAA studio.
Or do you really mean to tell me you think an AAA engine for COD games should be capable of producing a match 3 game for mobile? That’s a stretch, even for you.
Frostbit is a graphical engine I think, not a complete engine?
Definitely not an engine in the context as unity.
The part is so pointlessly hypothetical, it doesn’t deserve a response.
The second part is pretty much the same realm but more ingnorant than pointless. No it shouldn’t be ‘competing’ with frostbite, the are different tools for different purposes. It’s like asking if Photoshop should be competing with Maya.
So is Unity only good for 2D then?