UE4 3k price drop and democratization

^^ You probably want to just aim kind of low for your first couple projects honestly just so you can get them out of the way (crawl before you walk). I think my first 2 unreal based games kind of flopped (and I was trying to give them away for free). Didn't really see some measure of success til my 3rd attempt. By that point, I made important contacts and friends that could assist me in areas I was pretty novice in at the time (Art Animation).

This is all assuming you are working on your first project. If not, then nevermind!

 

Oh, I am aiming low lol. My goal right now is to finish my game with all the core functionality I laid out in the beginning. Nothing more. My game ideas are all simple and I expect to make nothing..........but I can hope to magically hit some weird niche that blows up lol.

 

QFA

I think this mass exodus some people are predicting isn't translating to any loss of revenue for UT. At least not yet.

But this US$3000 exemption is a great way to use revenue from an Unreal Engine game to finance a Unity Pro purchase

 

That's bad for Unity devs too, especially hobbiests and low-budget indies who can't afford to pay team members. The biggest factor pushing me towards Unreal isn't the feature set, but the fact that all the artists are going to be heading over there.

 

@prophet, Good sounds you have a great plan in place. Feel free to send me a message if you ever want some feedback. I try to hit up the Showcase and WIP forums when I get a chance

 

Will do. I am trying to break my lazy hobbiest approach to game making right now lol. I have been working on a 3 month game for a year and a half lol.

 

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people making noise aren't non-committal to begin with, but are finally aware that there's a huge alternative to Unity which never existed outside of the 2D space before.

 

I'm not sure how this changes anything ... you're saving the 5% royalty on the first 3k, which would be what, $150 per quarter? If $600 per annum is a consideration for you on publishing a title, perhaps game development is not the best course to follow?

 

Sarcasm, I hope.

 

A more likely scenario is that UT will have to downsize, or worse. UT will always have a small core of fiercely loyal users, but unless the company responds, and soon, that might be all it has left in the form of paying customers. I have a sinking feeling that the UT we know today will look a bit leaner a year from now, and in two or three years? Who knows.

The Epic deal is just too good to pass up for the majority of serious indies (and professionals for that matter). In most areas (excepting 2D, mobile, and web, for now), Epic simply has the better set of tools, with source availability and a ridiculously responsive engine team, who by every account seem just as excited as the user base about the source, submissions, blueprint development, and sharing with the community every day.

The patient approach that UT has adopted will likely lead to the slow cannibalization of its user base (if it hasn't already - only UT can say for sure). The longer developers have to play with UE4, the less likely they will be to return here and spend money (except for very specific projects). And even this may change in time as UE4 continues to improve its 2D, mobile, and web development toolset.

Is it pride, or simply a calculated business decision? Looking forward, UT should probably shift its focus to where it still has a perceived advantage (2D, mobile, web) in the hope that a smaller footprint and C# based scripting will be reason enough to keep sufficient paying users (and asset store users) on board. I also think the UT source will have to be made available in some affordable way, or bugs and incomplete features will be enough to push many users away, and toward the competition.

Get on it, UT! The silence is deafening.

I keep seeing this assumption about motives and the influence of the big, bad mega-corporation. Tim Sweeney has been itching to do something along these lines for years. It's his vision. If anything, the Tencent deal was his way of helping to make that a reality, not the other way around.

 

Just makes UT $1500+ look more unattractive to the people who care about that price.

 

Yeah, thinking about it overnight, I will have to agree. UT needs to do something soon.

Epic is, in practical terms (and we can argue about why they're doing it and the administration hassle seems the most likely explanation) subsidizing engine adoption from mid-tier indies with $12k per year., They don't have to do that. They could set a low floor, a couple of hundred, to stop the cent-submissions from coming in. Three thousand per quarter is a fair bit of money.

So, yeah, I think they're really keen on getting the indies who are on the cusp of success like they've already snatched the beginners. And UT needs to respond to that. Soon.

 

Not at all. That's more or less what they are implicitly implying with terms like 'democratization of game making'. And if that's the case, it's rather easy to imagine game making being more like music making if the tools are sufficient. I have to think that's Mr Helgasen's intent when he says that.

Or do you think that being Sony, Microsoft, Unity, or tencent instead of the Beatles, etc, etc, would have imparted anything worth while into their music? We've seen what happens when corporations try to create artificial musical stars and that's Justin Bieber. The thought is silly. Big corporations make cookie cutters designs. It is up to the artist to do something with the guitar or the game engine.

Nothing at all sarcastic about that at all and I'm a programmer not an artist. I simply don't scoff at the ideal that plenty of average people might actually be quite talented.

 

I actually didn't know Epic were struggling that much? Anyway the business model is a good one, make it accessible to as many people as possible aim for one million subs and earn 240 Million a year. Have 30 AAA grade engineers support and upgrade it, cutting only 18 Mill out the pie. Sell asset's made by Epic themselves through there own store and earn extra. Sweet deal, now they have a low risk venture compared to games which an Epic portion of them fall on there asses. They can also make and sell games from there baseline revenue from the engine. Take 20 to 30 mil of that profit, off they go to make more games..

Add 5% in when someone is worth taking money from. Downside is, Unreal has to be amazing or people can leave at any time which is amazing for us because they can't slack off. People forget that Unity is still an option and they can always switch back...

It's a triple edged dagger for Unity, they drop the prices it just affects there business at every level. They don't sell there own assets, they don't make games, they don't earn royalties. As most say if Epic were a new kid on the block, this wouldn't be a discussion but they're not and they are capable of great things and ahead in the 3D market.. But Epic really need to sort performance and ease of use out for the mobile market to get them extra subs. It's fine having large teams working on 3D, it's even fine having these sort of dev's fix bugs and help Epic out, it's great that UE4 as an engine is much more advanced. But it's all about subs and they need to branch for it to work. Which as this strategy relies on Epic doing so I'm sure they will, you already have SteamOS publishing available I heard rumours of more mobile device support.

The big player for Unity is Enlighten, most who know what it does realise why.

 

Yes, let the 'artsy' part be handled by 'normal' people. They make the cookie cutters, we, the artists, make the cookies.

 

Hmm... so they give also xbox/ps for free.. and now this... knock out!

 

I guess you're missing the free vita, free wii and free xbox one, etc that unity gives out. But don't let that stop you from trying to use your xbox one with ue4 and having microsoft say no.

 

The big player is a third party? Not sure that's a good thing!

 

Most of unity's tech is 3rd party. You either like it or you don't: physx, umbra, enlighten, fmod, speedtree, recast (navmesh), mono, etc. I guess only the core graphics engine and glue code + misc stuff and editor is first party.

 

As hippo says, it's all middleware even Unity itself is middleware to the core rendering components. Some middleware is better than others, Enlighten is a good one.

 

Lot of people will stay with NO ROYALTIES.
They don't want to be annoyed with any royalties could their game sell or not, i mean people selling games, not people toying with the engine only.

About indie game makers on PC/Mac/Linux (not mobile) , there is a big category of people ready to put some money use the engine, but with no real game plans or they hope one day ot be able to make and finish one , this is a big big part of indie devs, and if you multiply even by 20$ all that people i think it's juicy. Unity could
loose that category, people having just to pay 20$ at least one time to have lot better and complete than Unity free.

And there is other people or companies that succesfully make games, and that area of people will think differently, and will find 1500$ cheap. Or people that can make the game on Free version and whe the success is here, they buy Pro version, it's a way also to work. But some people will want all features right now when beginning their game.

Where i would like some effort would be Unity to offer some Royalties option for people not making money from a game published using Pro version.
It would be very clever and lot more natural to charge successfull games only, and let money to people to gain their life when their game money income is not that great.

Charging 1500$ for games that don't make good profit is not good, and mobile Pro versions are also too expensive again if you don't make enought money. They will really need intermediate price or better Royalties based.
UE4 is becoming more and more interesting for all small developpers.
Access to AAA technology for 20$ one time (pay when you fell you want some upgrade), specially if you don't target selling a game or publishing a low cost or free game why not using UE4 instead of Unity free.

Unity as lot of stuff on Asset Store, it is prooven, very easy to learn specially with C# , and becoming to bring serious stuff within V5, so it is place for Unity indeed. But like said, they will hav to propose intermediate prices or license/Royalties if they don't want to loose a good bunch of people.

 

It wouldn't hurt for UT to make a tentative announcement if they are looking into their pricing models. Not hard. Just good PR. I have invested a lot of money into UT and I personally would like to hear about what they are thinking. The silence is a little rude.

 

I agree but I think that we have to consider that Unity 5 is an unknown quantity at this point, so more news about that will probably be more important than prices for most. If it turns out to be "my god, it's full of stars!" then the perceived value of Unity will go up considerably, thus making knee-jerk reactions right now not a good idea.

 

Middleware is a good thing,
I've tested alot of Pathfinding technologies, and for some reason Unity's one beats them all in terms of performance. (hippocoder mentioned its a 3rd party)
enlighten can also surpass UE's GI

Also did anyone tested UE's performance in mobile? let me spare you the time, its awful.
seems they focus on the PC/Console area for now,
but still Unity wins in mobile, it shows you the Unity guys are competent.

now Unity are pushing towards AAA area while keeping their engine highly optimized.

i.e: enlighten in mobile:

if its optimized for mobile you can bet it will not drop fps for your players on stronger devices.


Unity is one of the most elastic tools I've come across, you can almost do anything with it.
and for any missing feature you can code your own dll to complete it.

if you make any complex and serious game, you will know that feeling.
its something that's hard to get with UE4.

 

The problem is what happens to Unity's ecosystem in the meantime? How important are these users to the ecosystem, how much do they spend on assets from the store, how many might have upgraded to Pro, how many contribute to the community and what will happen if these are lost for a few months to a few years? Then there are the teams who find UE4 licensing more attractive, how many lost Unity 5 sales or upgrades does that add up to.

You see its not about how hard or easy it is to switch, its about how many switch and what impact that will have before they might switch back? Can Unity really survive without appealing to the vast non-professional indie dreamers? Maybe they can, maybe they make enough off Pro and bespoke licensing deals that its not an issue, but when part of their mantra has been 'democratisation game development' you have to wonder if erosion of their user base is something they can live with?

Though I will point out again i'm not crying out for Unity to match UE4 licensing, mainly because at this point i'm not sure that they can, but it does worry me that the user base may be eroded and harmed. I was a long time (very long time) developer using Macromedia/Adobe Director, i've seen what can happen to once glorious applications and I'd hate to see something similar happen to Unity not because of their own mistakes, but because their business model was undercut by someone else.

 

Good points for mobile indeed and optimisation for PC/Mac/Linux.
But who said UE4 was not optimized for PC/Mac/Linux running physic based shaders and advanced lightening and full screen effects, particles ?

 

Funny I don't think I've seen anyone complain about UE4 performance on mobile devices. I've only noticed complaints about Android not supporting dynamic lights. Not that I care about porting my personal project to mobile devices to begin with though

I do see complaints all the time about the executable size being big on mobile devices. I do have an ipad. Perhaps I'll buy a Mac one of these days and try making a game for one someday

 

The PC performance has been bad enough, were running 780TI's and I7's the effects cave / Elemental demo drops between 40 - 50 FPS on our systems.. Imagine what that would be like on a mid range PC or even console!..

Not tried it on a PS4 yet, I doubt I want to.

 

Everybody that I run into on the UE4 forums that switched are very happy with UE4. I have spent spent tons of money in the asset store but that did not stop me from switching to UE4 for this project. Unity Pro license subscription fee is joke. You should get to keep the engine at the end. The buy price may be too high. Updates come way too slow. I hope UE4 causes Unity to rectify these things because I actually want to be good at both engine. Now I go with the better deal for the time being It is strange that this thread is not locked yet. I guess it depends on how the discussion leaning. LOL!

 

I agree that if you pay 16 months or 24 months or whatever it is to have spent enough to pay for Unity Pro licenses they should automatically convert to a perpetual license at the time the license(s) paid off, if it's only out of politeness and psychological reasons because practically speaking if you target an iOS platform your entire Unity and os X and iOS and xCode upgrade schedule is forced on you every two years or so anyway. Same is try now with Windows Store, Windows Phone, and Android to a lesser degree (and cheaper HW cost of MS and Android options make them less irksome).

 

I target PC and web. And I would like to own it for personal and hobby reasons. Good points though

 

OK, although if you go through Windows Store for PC releases, MS is drifting towards Apple style forced obsolescence but with web you'd be in good shape.

 

Thanks

 

I don't need to imagine that because I experienced that first hand with my GTX650M. It's a slideshow

 

To be fair, that card is almost 3x slower than current mid-range cards (GTX 750 Ti for example), and the two scenes are both extreme examples meant to showcase lighting, materials, and effects. That being said, UE4 has always been targeted toward current and next gen hardware, but it really depends on what you want to do with your scene.

 

Anyone griping about the price of any of the available engines have an almost zero percent chance of making a decent game. The cost of the engines and plugins are now trivial compared to the cost of hiring the art talent necessary to make a hit game. If you can't afford $75 a month for an engine, you couldn't afford to hire a AAA artist for more than two hours. Even at ten bucks an hour for a hack with pirated software, you can't afford them for a single day.

 

Yes I admit it's not exactly a hardcore gamer card

If you go with UnrealEngine, you better aim at hardcore gamers and current consoles. And I believe that rules out a vast part of the market, that actually buys indie games. Because that are usually not the hardcore gamers.
Hawken was not the big hit (They laid off their employees recently) and Strike Vector is apparently also not the most successful game.
That leads me to the conclusion that people who have the beefy hardware, prefer big studio games with million dollar marketing budgets, rather than indie games. And most small indie shops simply can't utilize Unreal's full power and awesome tools, due to a lack of resources. Star Citizen may be a exception but the developer behind that has already some successful titles with a huge fan base under his belt.
I could be wrong though.

Anyway, I really think UT should step up and do something in a timely manner. Their offer looks now kinda silly, in comparison with what Epic offers. I don't expect a undercut of Unreal's subscription price, but something that makes Unity more competitive in the price department.
They could also learn one thing, or two in terms of updates, overall communication, transparency from Epic.

 

Maybe they are being transparent because they have nothing to say because they aren't changing their prices. You have to admit the lobby to make Unity Pro free for all has been pretty incessant since they made Unity Basic free.

 

Transparency would mean saying something. Unity has not made any announcement since Epic announced their pricing and terms for UE4 over a month ago. Saying nothing is not being transparent.

 

Well it's an issue, we might be pumping out a good looking game but it's not ideal if pretty much nobody can play the damn thing. Hopefully UE will improve in these area's and tech will have changed by our release date. But still, it's pretty bad ..

 

That was not aimed at the lack of UT's responses about that matter.
More about UT's transparency in general. Epic gives you clear direction and at least a rough idea when you can expect new updates and what they will contain. And you can talk to their developers in the forums about features. They are really responsive and open to suggestions.
UT on the other hand gets more and more obscure. You don't even get a rough timeframe for any updates. Just look at the GUI disaster :/

 

Uh, so the tax codes, laws, governments and especially politicians are transparent when they say something? No, the less Unity says the more transparent they are.

 

Uhh what?

 

Yes if the Steam hardware survey is a measure, UE4 games are a quite narrow market.

I read somewhere from Tim Sweeney at the UnrealEngine AnswerHub that Unreal Engine4 will get performance improvements but it won't be significant. Especially for the editor, because the UI is based on slate which relies pretty hard on GPU's.
And I guess with the always improving effects and stuff like realtime GI, UE4's demand for beefy hardware will even raise in the near future.

So you better pray that the current cutting edge GPU's getting cheap pretty fast

 

Mine is a GTX 460M and it runs fine here.

 

What do you consider as fine?

I get only around 15fps at best in the effects cave.

 

Unity might react but unlike most posts here they will at least have the sense to wait for a period so that they can get hard facts about the effect this is having on their business i.e. is no-one buying the pro license, are asset store sales collapsing, is no-one purchasing the monthly subscription, and is the trend likely to be sustained? It takes at least 2 financial quarters to get that sort of data. Barely a month has gone by since the Epic announcement. I would suggest that the new $3000 clause is because the subscriptions were much less than they thought they would be, not because they got too many. I'm fairly certain Epic is aware the difficulty of administering this 5% and knew beforehand. All this stuff is bog standard economics laid out as far back as 'The wealth of Nations' by Adam Smith. Tencent are a gaming company from China, true, but read around on various forums about the comments on how they operate I don't think they're in the same headspace as Tim Sweeney. Yes they spent $330 million but that was share buyout etc and a lot of that went into the pockets of individuals not into recapitalising Epic. Yes Tencent are a $50 billion company, yes they could finance and keep Epic going for decades. But again look at what happened to Garagegames with Murdoch's Group. Sweeney also revealed that AAA games cost about three times as much to make now, and only about a third the number are being made this time around for new gen consoles. Plus my dealings with non-Europeans and North Americans suggest that money is not that available to waste on paying for a subscription and that even a $10 asset can be a big investment for some people. So yes the subscription model of Epic is now very attractive, yes it is likely aimed at BRICS market but it still doesn't follow that it is that attractive to as many as Epic/Tencent believe. There's a lot more to making games than just the engine, the engine can be the least expensive investment of all. The game I'm working on with a pro license has cost at least 6 times the cost of the license in art alone. A lot of opportunities to make money in certain genres are aimed at computers without GPUs. Nothing is ever that clear cut. Yes UE4 is AAA engine but as such it was aimed at high end PCs and consoles and if one removes all that then it's no better than a great many other engines out there, then it comes down to ease of use, and in this category Unity still wins hands down.

 

You're below the min specs for the engine.. I highly doubt it runs fine, if 780TI's and Titans are only getting 45 - 50 FPS in heavier scenes yours would crawl.. I have a 6850 laying about I should try that too.

 

If they can't afford $10..how do they afford the hardware needed to run UE4?