Dec 15, 2009
The 2009 Game Engine trends
Christian Nutt from Gamasutra has done a great job of encapsulating the 2009 news from the game engine market.
There are new players this year, internal engines are being shared across teams more, and as he points out the extended cycle of the consoles and the proven long tail of these consoles ensures there will continue to be lots of 360 and PS3 business out there for the growing pack of middleware vendors.
I think a significant new trend in 2009 is the birth of the prosumer game developer. Prosumers have permanently changed the photography industry; competing with professionals for revenue and manufacturers R&D and Marketing attention.
Both Unity and Epic have made significant moves in the prosumer space in 2009. Unity got a lot of press when they released their engine for free and quickly reached 33,500 users. And Epic made a very bold move with their free Unreal Development Kit with equally impressive results, UDK Eclipses 50,000 Users in One Week.
Prosumers probably outnumber professional developers already, if they start purchasing technology and services to support their hobby they will become an important new market for all middleware vendors.
This console cycle has been extremely challenging from a technological perspective. Many studios have come to rely on third party engine technology to deliver games to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
The shining star of that space has, of course, been Unreal Engine 3. It is used extremely widely, generally well-regarded, and flexible enough for many implementations. But as technology has matured, other multiplatform engines have arisen. Some are internal (like Square Enix’s Crystal Tools, which will make its public debut next week when Final Fantasy XIII ships in Japan.) But many are reaching wider than that.
Terminal Reality (Ghostbusters: The Video Game) has begun licensing its technology, the Infernal Engine to solid results. Vicious Cycle’s Vicious Engine was reborn in a PS3/Xbox 360 incarnation this year.
Even Capcom may be getting in on the act, in a shocking turn for Japan, with its powerful MT Framework possibly being used externally. It drove Resident Evil 5, among other titles, so that’s hard to argue with. Unity is expanding to service the Xbox 360. Ready At Dawn is moving into the space. And with other players like Emergent, Unity, Crytek, and Trinigy in the space, engine market is exploding.
This is great for developers — viable choices and competition are great for everyone. And tearing down the technological barriers of development — even a little — will only benefit gamers as well, as more ideas can be brought to light faster (and at lower cost.) This is a vital trend, and if the current console cycle is as extended as some think, there is a potential for a real flowering built on the back of these technologies.
