Full Unreal Engine 4 Developer Kit $19/MO + 5% / Why can't Unity Offer the same!

Epic are a freak of nature, I have never seen an engine move as quickly! Period..

But the point being, in six months time when they have truly covered and surpassed everything Unity and CryEngine has to offer, which is what they're trying to do it's pretty obvious. There is only a finite amount of things you can do with an engine, then they'll be just working on stability and ease of use. All these grand feature sets will slow down, it's inevitable but the question is how far ahead Unreal will be in six months?

 

@Chariots Unreal team has changed since March.. Look at pace of development since March.. They determined the target. we all know the "target"

unreal team declared war on unity And they are running at full speed

After a major update.. developer Mainly focused on bugs but unreal team? They are adding a lot of features

When I see 4.3 release note.. I think they are crazy now unreal's development speed is not normal.. is not common sense The development speed is really amazing crazy

 

I would hazard a guess that a minimum of 10% of pro devs do not use Unity to make games, or code games for other devs and do not participate in revenue sharing but still make money off their work. How do you deal with that. You gamers are so short sighted/inexperienced in business sometimes and ergo the suggestions come off looking like a bunch of smoke being blown for only their good.. That being said, because I do not intend to make a billion on a game I still want a better price point for the add ons. The Unity Pro price is handleable from an upgrade standpoint. The entry point is a bit high but you do get Unity free to evaluate it's worth to you.

 

Ok peter. Please don't even suggest to tell me what to do. I stopped myself from blasting your ue4 fanboy status. Let's keep it civil please.
You can only stuff so much functionality into something then it is maintaining and upgrading and changing the systems to better.
Simple.

 

Okay, but where does that leave Unity then? Because Unity's rate of adding new features is as slow as a river of molasses in February, but with the exception of 2D, UE4 is already leaps and bounds ahead.

 

Right and Unity needs to kick it into high gear or else fall by the waste side.
They are working on vast improvements you have to agree. Right?
So they see what epic is doing and the reaction of users. It is either step it up or fade away.
Same happened with the car industry. When Ford made the assembly line production, one car company couldn't compete and disappeared (and this was from a history channel show).
Wanna play ball with the other teams or cry?

 

I really... don't have to agree. 64 bit? That's not a vast improvement. That's a goddamn necessity and has been since 64 bit processors became ubiquitous more than 5 years ago. The new GUI? They've been hawking that since the 3.x days. The only "vast improvements" were the addition of DX11 support (which UE3 already had and is Windows only anyway) and the upcoming enlighten, which I am exceptionally wary of due to Unity's history of half-assing new features. Hell, Mechanim was barely useable until 4.2.

 

Give it time on the 2D bit, paper2D has come a long way in a short amount of time. I know it seems like were giving Unity a hard time here, end of the day you can't dismiss what Unity achieved in the first place.

It's funny how quickly everyone forgot CryEngine, it's not surprising at all but humorous never the less. But because they didn't adapt and exceed, they got crushed by Epic too. But it's not a good thing having one engine as a dominant player in the field, even if you use Unity or not we still need them to balance out the playing field.

They either exceed in features / rendering / support, or they drastically cut pricing. I can't see either happening...

 

Honestly, CryEngine was never that great. It's exceptionally hard to make anything other than photorealism in due to the lack of custom shader support.

 

Well it's good for me, but I still wouldn't use it .

Anyway back on with Unity, I agree with you the lack of basics has been troublesome and that's the reason for the switch. If this 64-bit editor would of been freely available six months ago things probably would of been different.

 

Being on the beta list since 2009 I disagree as I have had to download new versions of the betas at least once a week. I just installed the 12th version of the 4.6 beta yesterday. The thing with UE4 is that the whole group is on the beta list.

 

Referring to someone who disagrees with you as a fanboy doesn't grant you any sort of high ground. Also claiming you haven't slammed them while passively aggressively slamming them doesn't either.

If you want to keep it civil, that means both sides.

 

The Unity beta doesn't hold a candle to UE4's feature releases either. Not only that, but again I have to stress that outside of 2D, UE4 is already miles ahead of Unity.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/fu...ty-offer-the-same.235185/page-12#post-1698769

 

I don't think Epic will be able to slow down, even after the major features have been implemented. People will stop their subscriptions if they don't see new exciting things coming their way. There is always going to need to be a decent sized batch of improvements each 3-4 weeks to justify the continued UE4 subscriptions and to generate excitement.

When Epic runs out major things to do, then Epic will need to do lots of minor things and possibly even take on new major things the community wants. For example, the community has asked for C# support and a native Linux editor. Those would be examples of major things Epic could add at some point there were not really part of their own original roadmap. Other things Epic could add would be ultra realistic shaders for grass. Maybe Epic would create a point release that included everything to make a Crytek caliber outdoor scene. There is a lot of room for improvements even after all of the current major things are done.

 

You bring up a really good point. Unity's private beta is inferior to Epic's public beta for a number of reasons. Unity is hiding their latest features and hard work, while Epic is showcasing theirs. Unity desperately needs to move to a public beta system.

 

It's funny how quickly everyone forgot CryEngine, it's not surprising at all but humorous never the less. But because they didn't adapt and exceed, they got crushed by Epic too
Cryteck delivered their engine for indiessome years ago, but they never put the efforts and money to support indies and open up or make the engine more easy to take. I think Epic learned what not to do with UE4 and looking at Cryteck for indies not working.
Cryteck was mainly for big companies, and this is not indie market that put Cryteck down, but more their management and bad decisions (perhaps it was overpriced for smaller companies, overpriced for consoles ).
Also they were stuck on Crysis exactly same forumla each time, nothing new. At least Ubisoft with AC game try to make new things in each episode with new gameplay like piloting and managing a big boat; different period time and story, or PBS graphics and coop gameplay on last iteration.

Being on the beta list since 2009 I disagree as I have had to download new versions of the betas at least once a week. I just installed the 12th version of the 4.6 beta yesterday. The thing with UE4 is that the whole group is on the beta list.
OOoh great, and all lambda users that don't have Beta access ,what do they do ? And how do they perceive things if nothing new comes after some months ? Why UE works faster ? simply because open source helps a lot for features and bugs or it will be smaller updates.

Like some hobbyst we like UT for some good points, and we hope it will propose some a as good subscription system, and keep bringing needed tools after UT5 release. Why not open source if it could help the engine on bugs and features ?

 

I think in this business you never run out of things to do. I myself can think of many things for them to do (e.g. compile blueprints to C++, procedural city or universe generation,...). And optimizations can be done forever, or implementing the newest SIGGRAPH papers. An awesome engine should have 4-8 dynamic GI solutions and not one (because it depends on your game what works and what doesn't).
Look at console games and how they change over the lifetime of a console generation. Improving an engine is never finished.

 

Hence why I said "Major" changes, not like their going to sit on their asses and twiddle their thumbs when they are out of this "beta" phase. You have to remember, whilst it's great they do all these things procedural city and universe generation is something YOU should do. Although I wouldn't complain if they did it for people, don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

A bit over the top with the 4 - 8 GI solutions, two would do . (Yes I understand they have LPV and no it's not finished). Yes I will be making an alternative for UE4. Before Monday I'm looking into possible upgrade paths (if required) and time allocations.

 

I imagine that when they run out of features, they'll start working more on demo projects that people will be able to download and experiment with, rather than building things directly into the engine itself. Stuff like Angry Bots only, you know, good.

 

One thing I think we need to keep in mind that part of the reason UE4 has been developing at such a fast pace is because they've no doubt been planning this for a very long time.
These features they've added so far...aren't the sort of things that get decided on a whim; if their business model relies on keeping people subscribed...then just like filming an expensive TV series (like Game of Thrones or Walking Dead), you spend time filming all that stuff in advance so you can then put out high quality stuff at a regular and frequent pace later. Or what, you really think an episode of Walking Dead gets planned, written, filmed, edited, etc. in under a week just before airing? Heck no.

For all we know Epic has been planning all this and started working on it behind the scenes possibly as far back as UDK. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if some of the features they're putting out now is stuff they've had functional well before UE4 was even released. And if this is what they've decided their new business model should be (the subscriptions that is) you can bet they have possibly years worth of content planned in advance. I know I would anyway.

Now mind you, I'm not trying to diminish the achievement of having all these updates, not in the slightest. It is a lot of work, and a lot of the stuff 4.3 has added definitely has my interest, Epic absolutely should be proud. And it's definitely good for developers. And I do like the rate at which they've been adding features.
But don't make the mistake of thinking that they managed to make such a high volume of features from start to finish in just the last couple of months, just like that. This is the result of years of planning.

Why is being aware of this relevant to Unity? Because you can't just get the ball rolling at that same speed instantly without breaking your back in the process. Epic is moving at a really fast pace now, but they spent a lot of time behind the scenes getting it to that point before revealing it. Similarly, it's not fair to expect UT to match that speed without also giving them the time to build up momentum. Otherwise you get buggy features with no clear sense of direction...

 

Actually, a lot of their features were added on a whim. Their sprite impostor system that was just added was the result of a "do whatever the hell you want" thing they have every friday per month.

 

That's in addition to all the stuff they already had planned. They also got that "do whatever the hell you want" friday thing from Unity, who've been doing that since before Unity Free was released. Not that this particularly matters much though since my original point still stands...

 

Uh, this has been a long-standing thing at Epic. Like, years long. They didn't "get it from Unity."

And that's the point. They did it in addition to all this stuff. It wasn't planned. They have stuff they're doing and adding that are completely outside their roadmap.

 

Going fast can be good if the engine is open source , caus bugs can be fixed by the community.
Without open source , lot less bug fixes and new features, Epic working on major stuff mainly.
I don't know , but Epic team (engine only not art) is smaller than Unity or am i wrong ?

I think Unity and mobile Free, and 75$ month system have been considered by Epic some months before they propose their pricing. They have reviewed their initial Royalties system that was highter at start, so they have listened to users and foudn a good compromise.

UT will just need to bring as good lightening as UE and PBS shaders, than bring two really missing features as blueprint like and shader editor and it will be very competitive by bringing some new pricing system. Perhaps we'll got a very good surprise ?

 

I'm sorry, but that's just silly. You're thinking about Epic in a UT mindset; with UT, features are developed but squirreled away for the next big release.

With UE4, the process is transparent, from roadmap to experimental release to beta to release ready feature (which is something UT should better emulate). Stuff can be tried out while still in development, and the more talented members of the community often take part in the process. There's no super secret plan at work here; their developers are just good at what they do.

 

They have/had a plan in place thus the road map showing it. You can't run a business by pulling it out your backside.
And they better be good at it. They have been doing it for a long time and using it for production of games. This gives them the advantage because they find their own mistakes in their own engine by working in it.
Both have testers who are working with the alpha/beta versions. Don't think that epic is special in that regard..

 

I agree. This is why I said it's silly to think Epic would develop features and then hide them away for a later reveal. Per the testers, as you put it, Epic is just a little bit special; they have every engine user available to test their latest updates because of their source availability - an advantage which won't change unless UT finds a way to do something similar.

 

I agree also! lol
the way to learn the issues personally is to use it in production. Something that UT doesn't do. Pretty demo's are fine and dandy but they are getting their hands dirty a little with the different tutorials they have been doing but nothing like what Epic has/is doing.

 

Well Unity has been doing that since at least since 2009, before UDK. If Epic has been doing that since before then, well I stand corrected.

Anyway, according to them it wasn't planned. It may or may not have been. But whether it was or wasn't is irrelevant because it doesn't change my original point that they've been planning a lot of this stuff for a long time. Planning, which by the way includes planning the ability to add features on a whim outside of the core public roadmap. That sort of thing requires architecture in place to handle those sorts of additions.

For example, to my knowledge they didn't add in a whole impostor system from scratch on a whim just like that. They already had an impostor system in even in UDK. Expanding/upgrading that, sure that could be done on a whim, because they already have the core system in place. Adding the whole system from scratch? That takes planning.
The feature added in 4.3 also isn't exactly a new/revolutionary feature, N64 era games had that feature, and it could be implemented in a couple of days in Unity if someone were so inclined...

Is it silly? They just pulled that roadmap out of their ass did they? With no working prototypes to know how well the features would work? It seem mostly transparent now. How long was UE4 in development before, hm? How long were developers like (if I remember correctly) ShadowK and Tato trying out UE4 under NDAs before it went public? AAA studios before that? All I'm saying is that you don't just do this kind of stuff without serious planning. And Epic has had years observe and plan.

 

Many of us don't care about the details like this one, the fact as open source this gives them a big advantage.
Today they have best features and engine is open to anyone paying some 20$. Let's wait to see UT proposition.

 

Yes, the theory that Epic keeps developed features hidden away to be revealed later, in order to impress users with its development speed, is ridiculous (IMO).

Their roadmap is definitely the result of serious planning, which includes user voting for feature requests. It's also quite transparent. Why does it matter how much planning and prototyping took place before NDAs were lifted? Do you think Epic has some secret agenda its users know nothing about?

EDIT

Sorry if we're getting a bit off topic, but I just didn't get that line of thought.

 

I can't believe that we've actually got people drifting into "Epic's Grand Unreal Engine Conspiracy" posts now.

 

Epic has a good roadmap with updates. Suggestions are accepted occasionally. It doesn't matter when a feature is thought of or conceptualized by however many people. What matters is a team that cares about making "the best", dreams big (short term and long term), and gets to work. Current plans are rather transparent.

https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap

 

You can compare UE 4.2 with UE 4.3 source code. It's all there for all to view. Most of the over 500 changes are natural improvements in code, so I don't think they released the inferior code for 4.2 if they already had the better one.
Of course it can be that some new systems are created in a private repository until they reach a certain point, but I assume as soon as they are integrated in the engine as "experimental" features you can see the development live on github.
It's simple: these guys are just very good at what they do, that's why Unreal is a name in the business for so long.

 

Are you sure that was the same thing on N64? These imposters look 3d. The ones that are constrained to be in the plane, you can walk around them and they look 3d, with lighting and everything. I couldn't tell that these are not meshes.
And the "Render a Per Object Shadow Depth Texture" thing, it looks so good. The fu#king tree is unlit!!! But has shadows that glide over the leaves as they move in the wind. An awesome trick to render beautiful trees on mobile. You must see it in the twitch stream video if you haven't.

Edit:
"Render Unwrapped Material to Textures", "Render 3D Imposter Sprites", "Render a Per Object Shadow Depth Texture" and "Flipbook Animations" are all just example usages of the new Render To Texture Blueprint node if I understood correctly.

 

UE4 improvements won't stop. Ever.
If you can't see that you should be a little open minded...

There's not just Epic's staff working on improvements, there's thousands of users contributing code and suggestions on GitHub. When someone contribute major key improvement, they are credited by what they've done.
Also there are those 'game templates' that will keep them busy forever if for any reason community decides there's no need for any new engine feature to add anymore.

Unity is great, but something like that can't be ignored. Unity could expand as quick if source wasn't locked.

 

my opinion about UE4:
I tried this development environment for two weeks and I'm upset: very poor support for mobile platforms. Unity3d in 99% of the cases works well on mobile platforms. But UE4 projects very bad for mobile devices. Even those projects that came as a ue4-demo have big troubles on Android.
I have a top-end PC for development. But even at this top-end computer the projects builds a lot of time (sometimes 15-20 minutes). Unity3d builds a maximum 2 minutes on the same PC. Time is money.
Maybe in six months UE4 will be ready to help indie developers to make games for mobile platforms. For now I'm back on Unity3d for 6 months at least
PS the sake of objectivity: I admire the new UE4-GUI - I felt aesthetic pleasure, when I worked in this development environment. It's not only beautiful, but also intuitively for understand, the current interface Unity3d frankly annoying, especially after I used the UE4-GUI. Blueprints also amazing concept and it's also intuitively for understand.
P.P.S. of course, if you are creating game for PC only, may be UE4 is the only choice

 

Yes, it's something that's not often highlighted: UE4's interface is so well-designed and intuitive. Everything works the way you'd expect it to - and it even looks beautiful as well.

Having said that, I just preordered Unity 5. We already have way too much invested in our current project to switch right now. We'll compare both platforms a year from now, when the the UE community has grown and UE's Marketplace is stocked up.

 

I agree i have tested Android yesterday, the build time was long , and the APK on mobile just closes when launched. About the example projects all are PC examples mainly using PBS shaders, the one that i tested and should have worked is the 2.5D jumping game meaned for mobile by seeing the gameplay input.
Mobile is some area where Epic and the community will have lot work to do, for now until UT5 comes , UE remains a cheap solution for big features.

 

Per compile times, it can take that long the first time the engine/project is compiled, but the project itself is supposed to compile much faster the second time around. I guess the specifics will vary per project, though.

Helpful compile time info from Thursday's Twitch stream -- scroll ahead to 39:40:

http://www.twitch.tv/unrealengine/b/548456578

And Mike Fricker posted a detailed update on the subject a few days ago:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/sho...ering-if-I-can-even-do-this&p=97060#post97060

So it seems that's another priority of theirs. I hope that's helpful!

 

@Daydreamer66
Sorry for the confusion, i used the wrong word, i wanted to say that Android packaging that i found a bit longer to package a simple level.

 

Conspiracy? Hardly. You're a fool if you don't think big companies with millions or more on the line don't plan these things well in advance. Take Hollywood for instance. My dad works in the film industry, he talks with the higher ups, and you better believe that the big film companies have the next decade's worth of movies planned out in advance. That's not a conspiracy, that's reality. That's what you do when you're eliminating as much risk as possible.
I'm not saying that Epic is necessarily doing it to that extent, but planning in advance like that is a pretty standard business practice, among successful companies anyway. But then, I'm guessing your main point here was to just claim it's just a conspiracy as a way to dismiss it offhand so whatever.

Of course they have an agenda. So does Unity and most other companies. That's how this works. You do R&D, you prototype and develop features, you find out what's useful and what isn't. You don't waste time on some feature that sounds cool but that in the end is fairly useless. Again, when your business model revolves around keeping people subscribed, you NEED lots of high quality content at a regular pace. You could risk delays by doing it without any planning at all and trusting things will work out...Or you can plan in advance and eliminate most of the risk.

You seem to agree with me though that they did a lot of planning. And as far as I know (I could be wrong), UE4 was available under NDA for roughly a year before the public $20/month deal. So if we assume even just one year of planning and prepping for the subscription release, there's a lot that can be done in that one year.
But they were working on UE4 long before that so they had what, maybe another year or two of preparation? Maybe more?

See it's not necessarily that they're having fully developed features hidden away to be revealed later. That's not really what I'm getting at here. What I'm talking about is them spending time developing separate features here and there and experimenting and tinkering with ideas that might not necessarily be production ready at that moment, but that can be worked into the engine later, or that they plan on adding in at some point.
Just look at Unity's GUI system. It's been taking forever and users would have been much happier and complained much less if they had been completely oblivious it was in development at all until it was almost ready to be released. That is why you develop these things in advance and keep it quiet. Unity already tried being transparent. That's why UT generally keeps us in the dark about this stuff and why (nowadays) they don't tend to announce a feature until it's almost ready (even if it won't be 100% perfect upon release).

As to why it matters how much planning and stuff took place before NDAs were lifted, I already explained that in my first post about this. It's one of the main factors when people bitch and complain asking why Unity isn't matching Unreal's development pace. If UT decides it is a priority to release features at a similar pace they will do so...but again, it won't happen without some major planning and prep work first and it's only been a few months since Epic's deal.

Well that's exactly my point. You don't care and neither do I, and neither do most of the users. We only care about the end result. Which is why companies like Epic keep VERY quiet about what they do behind the scenes. Why they plan this stuff in advance. Unity learned this the hard way by announcing the GUI system early on and it bit them in the ass.
That's why I agree with you that we should wait to see what UT does (as opposed to the complaining right now that Unity isn't matching UE4's development pace just yet).

 

What I'm saying isn't necessarily that they're releasing inferior code. Just because a feature has been prototyped or experimented with, or is even functional, as we all know that doesn't necessarily mean it's ready for public use. Like you say, some of these new systems might be in a private repository...But some of these might not necessarily be completed right away. Some may be ignored for a while just sit there for months or even years before being looked at again while they work on more immediate stuff. Some features might be put on hold because the hardware isn't there yet. Some that might have been considered failures a few years ago might be explored again, and so on. That's what I'm trying to get across here when I say that they might have worked on some of these features even before UE4 was released.

For my own game BHB there are a number of features where I've taken similar approaches. I might play around with an idea for a feature but I maybe don't have the time to fully implement it at the moment, or it needs more prototyping or whatever, so I decide I'll get back to it later. Getting back to it later might mean a few days later or a year later (the game itself has already been in development for 2 years). The gravity system in BHB is a perfect example: implemented early version in the first few months (that in retrospect was crappy), decided it was good enough for now, and then got back to it about 8 months later and completely overhauled it. If I told people I was planning on overhauling it, they would have spent 8 months wondering when or even if I was going to do that.
I can only imagine it's many times worse for Epic and UT.

It was present on N64, specifically Mario Kart 64 and a few other games. All the racers in Mario Kart 64 are sprites and exactly which sprite image gets used changes depending on the camera angle (just like Unreal's new system). The sprites themselves are also taken from pre-rendered 3d models, only instead of rendering it in-engine they did it in their 3d package.

The main difference between Mario Kart 64's version and Unreal's version is Unreal's is higher resolution and (if I'm not mistaken) uses normal maps so they can be affected by lighting, so it's much more realistic. Mario Kart 64's version however took it a bit farther by even having multiple sets so they could have animations (when you turn left/right for example, you have a series of 3d imposters playing in sequence to make the racer lean left/right, and because each frame in the animation is a 3d impostor, you can view the animation from any angle).

Diddy Kong Racing did this too, but not for everything. They did a mix where most of the racers' vehicle was a 3d mesh, but then used animated 3d impostors for the car wheels, the hovercraft's fan in the back, and the airplane's propellers. It's quite ingenious really, especially for its time. Very efficient.

 

Hmm those updates from Epic are sure a bit depressing...

I'm wondering what Unity 5 will hold up against UE4.

-PBS
-Enlighten
-GUI
-Improved Physics system (but no apex support)
- ? new terrain system
- ? new input system
- ? improved particle system
- ? improved mecanim

Since those [Official] threads pops up it could be that those systems with ? marked will be integrated. Has someone more information what will be added or which features will Unity 5 include? Or should we wait till Unite for more info?

@Jingle Fett: But what were Unity then planing all this time? Regarding those [Official] threads it truly looks like Unity had not even made plans in those past years. The complaints over those old systems were always there but ignored by UT. And that is something UT has to change.

 

I think we all agree about the importance of planning, but that's a separate matter from whether a company reveals those plans. The highlighted statement above, as it pertains to Epic, just isn't correct.

Epic's developers have been ridiculously forthcoming since the public release of UE4. It's their new culture. They regularly discuss planned features, including those planned in the more distant future, and ideas which might or might not come to fruition. You can find a few examples of this if you watch the latest Twitch stream (linked above). It's all laid out on their roadmap, which is a living document subject to changes and additions (some suggested by users).

This mindset, which, as you pointed out, is very different from UT's, is actually why Epic doesn't really receive complaints about deadlines. When users are kept in the same loop as developers, and they have access to even the earliest iterations of code (daily builds, weekly preview builds, etc.), then progress is readily apparent to everyone. There simply isn't anything to hide. It also helps that they've been very good about meeting their short term deadlines.

Again, a similar culture shift by UT would be welcome, but at present their gated release schedule (and closed source) somewhat prohibits this.

 

Epic are many things but quiet isn't one of them, from speaking with them it's part of their strategy and with Tencent's attitude of don't lead dominate, the picture is pretty clear from where I'm standing.

It's obvious from Beta UE4 was designed like no other engine, it's a complete middleware replacement tool and anyone else offering middleware can do it themselves. Epic don't need to spend time integrating, companies fix and upgrade their code base for free. But it takes a LOT of skill to get to that point..

What I think is most impressive, apart from the engine design is how they treat their customers. They seems to circumvent paid support in hopes of more custom. Which is a risky proposition but hell, it works for them..

But all this means for me is easier development.

 

For what I see, I'm not sure how all this is sustainable from Epic's perspective. They're just trying to knock competition out because if you read business fundamentals, there is no way they can afford this massive stunt forever.

 

I don't see what all of that gossip has to do with prices It comes off like a large fanboy gathering, which is slightly cringeworthy on the Unity forums.

Everyone knows about UE4 and can easily check it out at those prices. Don't need constant justification, it just comes off wrong, instead of balanced.

I agree, Unity has *lots* of work to do. But being a blinkered fanboy on the forum of a completely different engine is just embarrassing at this point, and worrying, sends a message that it's just troll fanboys to Unity as opposed to clear and reasoned arguments that a company can be convinced by.

The places to be proactive are responding early on to [OFFICIAL] threads by Unity, telling Unity precisely what they need to make Unity a better product. Many of the posters here chose not to even respond to those threads, and instead just harp on about the second coming.

Obviously, people want Unity cheaper and better, but simply saying "UE4 is da powa" is neither and doesn't send the right message, it merely makes them something of an ignored quantity as there is no value to the information being given.

-

Personally, I think Unity has to lower it's prices. I've said that many times. Or increase the value of the product dramatically. Royalty free is very good though, so I'm quite keen to see that stay, and if that means same price as it is now, then I'm willing to pay that price, but that's my 2 cents.

Having seen the impact of having available source to the community, I like what I am seeing, and it would be pretty awesome if Unity was able to do something similar to at least a large portion of the engine. I suspect the build times would be a bit long though.

 

Do you know how loaded Tencent are? They could keep this up forever out of their pocket change.

 

Putting aside what they make from AAA studios licensing their engine (which would be substantial), their goal would seem to be making indies successful, which will earn them either 5% after the first $3000 in quarterly profits or custom licensing fees. Of course, they also create their own games with their tech from time to time (Fortnite and the new Unreal Tournament are both in the works).

BTW, I'm in the camp that thinks Unity would benefit greatly if the developers used the engine to develop a commercial game.