Future of Game Engines

Battle for the title of “Best Game Engine”

Game Engines companies have never been competitive with each other in the past, the reason being the tag “Proprietary”. Game Engines could showcase their feature and efficiency just for the sake of promoting their games. This non-competitive environment continued until Unity made its presence in the market. Back in the 2000s, Unreal was the only AAA Game engine available for solo developers, but after the release of Unity, Unreal became aware that they no longer hold the monopoly. Unity introduced features that were delighting to developers. They made deals with companies, supported indie developers, and developed easy-to-use & friendly components for their game engine, which gave them TRP and build a community stronger than Unreal. 10 years later, Unity is now standing side by side with Unreal grabbing titles of the best game engine of the year.

Graphics vs Optimization

Unity has been focusing on its graphics with new features like HDRP, CPU & GPU Lightmapper, Virtual Texturing, and much more, but being a small-scaled developed framework, it is hard to keep up when your competitor is controlling over AAA title deals an already had a presence since 1995. Being funded by a billionaire company, Unreal grew a team of geniuses, which helped them to develop the most optimized and advanced virtualized micro polygon geometry, “Nanite”. It will take Unity another 5–10 years to achieve an alternate to Nanite. Unity has now been working on promoting efficient and optimized multi-threaded Data-Oriented Technology, “DOTS”, and focusing more on non-game applications. Nevertheless, Unity will come back with a photorealism graphic update in future updates.

Working with Business Industry

Unity has been working in different domains for the past couple of years to expand its engine for simulation and AI, whereas Unreal is more focused on films and animation. Unreal claims to be the most powerful and advanced game engine which can be the reason to enroll their involvement in the CGI industry. With Unity’s latest updates, they shared their story collaborating with BMW, and on the other hand, Unreal showcased their work in the new Star Wars movie. They both are focused on recreating their name and fame as an Engine and not as Game Engine.

Titles and Platforms

It’s not new for Unreal Engine to be the backbone of AAA titles. Titles like Fortnite, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Star Wars: Jedi, Tom Clancy, NBA, etc, are some of the best-selling games, whereas Unity has always been there for indie developers. Titles like In the valley of Gods, Monument Valley, Firewatch are some of the most loved games by gamers. Currently, both the engines are working on sponsoring solo developers to advertise their engines.

Next-Gen Engine

Unity and Unreal, both are looking forward to developing better graphics and more optimized components. Focusing on console platform delivery is also their concern. Working closely with 3D modeling software companies like Autodesk to build a pipeline for next-gen modeling is one of the priorities as Autodesk has announced new patterns in contrast to Ray-Tracing.

Battle continuous among Unity and Unreal, but their recent fast pace growth is now becoming concerning to proprietary engines like frostbite.