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[Leyasu]

I personally think having to have the game on the Xbox One was the biggest problem for them, in addition to having less time to create the engine than they would have needed. Halo Infinate actually nailed the Halo look and feel, which was the thing they really needed to get right after their previous efforts.
The gameplay in Halo Infinite was excellent.
The biggest issue for me with Halo was the pop in, which I thinking was because they couldn't tailor the engine to take advantage of the XSX SSD. On top of that, the game lacked that polish I wanted to see. Stuff like ground deformation when the warthog was travelling for instance. Again, I think that came down to time, and I also don't think 343i are the most talented studio from a graphical point of view. Diversity over talent comes home to roost.

I'm not saying that it doesn't play great or looks bad because it doesn't. What all the rumours are are pointing to is that the whole thing is held together with zip ties and it is a long and laborious process to do anything.

 

[Corndog]

Sometimes it's cheaper and guaranteed to use UE if you really have incompetent devs who will end up fucking up all the R&D money with a shit engine.

Forza engine and idtech don’t look like they were made by incompetents. Slipspace underwelmed in my opinion though.

 

[BusierDonkey]

I’m looking forward to what their studios are doing with a variety of different engines, specifically the new iteration of the Creation Engine. Based off the in-engine clip they showed last year it's certainly seems more capable than the current one. The other one I'm looking forward to is the next Forzatech engine. T10 has been hammering away at this for five years at this point. Forza Horizon 5 on the current engine looks and runs very well so I'm excited to see what the new engine delivers. id never dissapoints and Coalition are already balls-deep in UE5.

Hopefully the studios all start taking advantage of reconstruction like DLSS to get better performance on PC across all their studios. They are trailing in that space for whatever reason. So far of their studios only id have really taken advantage of DLSS, but the results were amazing in Doom Eternal.

 

[Deerock71]

Typos galore.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Chukhopops]

Pixel Opus and Housemarque used UE4 also.

I wouldn’t call them the main studios but you are correct indeed.

 

[Neilg]

These discussions are usually of high entertainment value but only because it usually generates an output which is so fucking stupid it's beyond beleif.. I mean, first of all let's define what an "engine" actually is. Let me give an obvious hint: It's not necessarily what you see on the screen as an end user.. It's more about the flexibility and efficiency of the toolset. I love this topic, but I wish the discussion went a little deeper than usual for once.

Edit: I see that some people are on point, good to see, thank you!

yeah I was so close to writing a post trying to explain why some of the claims here are dumb, but it's pretty clear the massive lack of knowledge about what an engine actually is would make it a total waste of time.
the pros, cons and logistics involved in making an engine robust enough to be modified by anyone with a home computer is wildly different to the needs of a tight knit studio where the only people interacting with it are also actively maintaining it.

 

[CamHostage]

I get where the OP is coming from, because MS has the resources and the history (and now several renown "engines" either developed in-house or in their roster through acquisition,) and when you look at the games made with the tech MS owns, you think, "more of this, please!"

But the term "engine" is way over-esteemed in the importance of developing a game. Making games look pretty and run smoothly, that's almost the easy part of designing these days.



What's much more important is the development suite surrounding the game engine, and the assets services and plug-in/middleware provider accessories and especially the technical support that is available for users of the engine. That's where Unreal Engine and Unity earn their adoption. A developer can create their own engine, but then everybody who works with that engine needs to come to that developer to understand how to work with it or to make new parts of the engine needed for the project. Game development suites and middleware services are about making game creation feasible through solid design and performative tools; how badass the final game can be, that's generally up to you.

Unreal Engine 5, for example, is a little bit of Nanite+Lumen graphic wow-factor on the surface and a whole lot of ease of direct ZBrush sculpt/photogrammetry scan import, and a believable and tested GI solution to ideally eliminate hard-bake lights/reflections, and collaborative design improvements such as One File Per Actor or Data Layers, and a sound system with control over DSP graph generation and an IK Rig that can allow additive adjustments to pre-existing animation. and streamlined workflow with an easily browsible Content Browser, and stability, quality, & performance improvements, and on and on...

Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon, CoD, these are all impressive-looking games in part because they have elite-quality engines that run high-quality assets at near-flawless performance with robust features in online and other functionalities... but all of that was just the foundation to integrate the work of hundreds of people, only a few of whom were creating the "engine". If you just handed these engines out to other developers as is, you would not get the next Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon, or CoD just by way of the engine being awesome.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Forza engine and idtech don’t look like they were made by incompetents. Slipspace underwelmed in my opinion though.

That's why I said "sometimes". Forza engine is great, same as ID Tech's.

 

[3liteDragon]

And 3liteDragon winjer

First game using direct storage will be Forspoken. How much it is using it? Who knows.

Gonna be interesting to see how this works, I'm confused tbh with the whole Windows 10 & 11 support stuff cause it doesn't make any sense to me. When did this game start production btw?

 

[IntentionalPun]

I wonder why they choose that game. From every thing I saw about it, it ranges from annoying to bland.
Shame they didn't pick a better game to show off the tech at launch.

I'm not sure why you think anyone "Chose" the game; it's likely just the first game releasing w/ it based on availability of tech.

 

[winjer]

I'm not sure why you think anyone "Chose" the game; it's likely just the first game releasing w/ it based on availability of tech.

Do you think someone pull a name out of a hat or something?
This is a new tech. Requires work to implement and money.
So MS and Square had to decide a game to start with. I wouldn't be surprised if MS had sent a team of engineers to help implement the tech a bit like nVidia, Intel and AMD did with their own tech.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Do you think someone pull a name out of a hat or something?
This is a new tech. Requires work to implement and money.
So MS and Square had to decide a game to start with. I wouldn't be surprised if MS had sent a team of engineers to help implement the tech a bit like nVidia, Intel and AMD did with their own tech.

The tech was released to all devs mid last year for PC and games being developed for Xbox were already using a version of it.

None of that requires MS to go do any hands on work or "pick someone" to work with. They have documentation, fairly extensive documentation, and ways to get further support.

Is it possible MS "picked a dev" wo work with? Sure... but assuming that is a bit silly. Devs have been using a version of this API for well over 2 years now. It's not even particularly complex..

 

[CamHostage]

I'm surprised MS hasn't entered this field, as a core tenet of their business is leasing software to enterprise businesses. Would seem like a natural thing to do given the amount of talent that they already have in-house in that area. Plus, there would likely be benefits for the Xbox gaming division, potentially both performance and financial gains, to use an engine tightly integrated with the GDK.

They tried, sort of, a long time ago, kind of? XNA Game Studio (which still lives on independently via MonoGame) was a low-level entry from Microsoft designed for independent game development to publish on Xbox 360 and Windows Phone and other platforms of the time. It was mostly used for 2D or small-scale games like Bastion, The Dishwasher, & Weapon of Choice, but you could make 3D with it (and had XBLA Avatar integration) or whatever you could build out of it.

Gamasutra - BREAKING: Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

* I also sort of recall there was some pro version of the XNA tools or something else at the time MS was also experimenting with for more advanced game development on Microsoft tools. (Anybody else remember like a 3D demo of a lady in black-and-white with red lipstick drinking tea? What was that demo for?)

Ultimately, by the time of Xbox One, MS's messaging about engine licensing in the rollout of the ID@Xbox program was that there was already plenty of good solutions on the market already.

 

[IntentionalPun]

They tried, sort of, a long time ago, kind of? XNA Game Studio (which still lives on independently via MonoGame) was a low-level entry from Microsoft designed for independent game development to publish on Xbox 360 and Windows Phone and other platforms of the time. It as mostly used for 2D or small-scale games like Bastion, The Dishwasher, & Weapon of Choice, but it could do 3D (and had XBLA Avatar integration) or whatever you could build out of it.

Gamasutra - BREAKING: Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

* I also sort of recall there was some pro version of the XNA tools or something else at the time MS was also experimenting with for more advanced game development on Microsoft tools. (Anybody else remember like a 3D demo of a lady in black-and-white with red lipstick drinking tea? What was that demo for?)

Ultimately, by the time of Xbox One, MS's messaging about engine licensing by the time of its ID@Xbox program was that there was already plenty of good solutions on the market already.

XNA is was/s a framework much like the GDK.

That's the business MS has always been in.. sort of "mid to low level SDKs/Frameworks" not engines. They then also build dev tools like Visual Studio, and do sort of add-ons to their frameworks that are at the level of like a middleware you'd see used in a bunch of games.

None of that is really at the level of an engine, XNA certainly wasn't. It was just .Net for Xbox basically; lower performance because it's sandboxed in an inefficient way.. but safe to let the public mess with as there is no low level API access for hacking or writing any sort of malicious code.

 

[Corndog]

I personally think having to have the game on the Xbox One was the biggest problem for them, in addition to having less time to create the engine than they would have needed. Halo Infinate actually nailed the Halo look and feel, which was the thing they really needed to get right after their previous efforts.
The gameplay in Halo Infinite was excellent.
The biggest issue for me with Halo was the pop in, which I thinking was because they couldn't tailor the engine to take advantage of the XSX SSD. On top of that, the game lacked that polish I wanted to see. Stuff like ground deformation when the warthog was travelling for instance. Again, I think that came down to time, and I also don't think 343i are the most talented studio from a graphical point of view. Diversity over talent comes home to roost.

Seems to be the downfall of some studios.

 

[Badlucktroll]

I had seen this topic mentioned before on a forum but couldn't find it in Gaf, but it really makes good sense, at least to me.
Microsoft now has some of the best first party game engines in the buisness.
Id tech 7 (id)
Forzatech (Turn 10)
Creation Engine (Bethesda)
Slipspace (343i)
Void Engine (Arkane)
And on top of that they will be having some cutting edge Engine tech coming in via Activision Blizzard such as IW Engine (Infinity Ward).

Microsoft is in a great position to take the best of all those engines to create a brand new cutting edge engine that incorporates all the DX12 U extensions such as Mesh Shaders, ML, SFS etc and then put it out as a third party middleware engine to compete against Unreal Engine. In that space there is only really UE, Unity and a bit of Crytech, which apparently is hard to program for.

With MSs software pedigree and coding resources they could put together an engine which would rival UE5.
Infact they are the company in the best position to do so. Their DX12U API is the leading API on PC, and Xbox by default. This could allow MS to chase other buisness areas such as Hollywood movie production like Epic is doing.
It creates another ecosystem for MS.
I think it compliments their existing products and Epic need some real opposition in that space.

Why not GAF? Why not?

 

[Jaybe]

OP reminds of a person who preferred setting 144hz monitors to 60hz.

The best technical first party game in graphics and performance that a MS studio has put out is Gears 5 by The Coalition built on Unreal. MS developers should do more with Unreal where they can. I’ll be curious what The Initiative is using for Perfect Dark.

 

[Beechos]

Why does MS need to compete against UE5 when none of the main Sony studios use it?

The only Sony first party using UE4 I can think of is … Bend lol. All the main ones use proprietary engines.

Im thinking because somehow people associate the unreal engine with ps5 after the epic demo. Just how all the ps5 people would go apeshit if kojima, from software or silent hill had an exclusive xbox game since they consider those properties sony.

 

[Sega Orphan]

Wow, your right. I actually forgot about all those games. I guess they didn't leave an impression.

Most likely they didn't as I assume you are a PS only player. But still, Deathloop and Psychonauts 2 were pretty high up in GOTY talks, so you must of missed that as well.

 

[Sega Orphan]

Unreal engine is the product of decades of hundreds of development teams' cumulative efforts to update.

MS cannot compete with Unreal. No single company can unless they release it as a middleware engine available to everyone and even then they'd be years behind Unreal in terms of ubiquity and community contribution.

Yes and no. If we look at UE4, there were plenty of third party engines which looked better than UE4 games. All of Sony's major studios like GG, SMS, ND, Insomniac and SP have their own in-house engines, and other companies like Asobo and Id also have engines that performed better than UE4. UE5 is the next step from UE4 and just like Epic, MS could put the resources into idtech to get their idtech 8 engine to have that same step up. MS could buy any technology they needed to do that.
That's kinda my point. Epic turn over in 2020 was 5.1 billion. That puts their value at around 50 billion if we compare it to recent acquisitions.
MS has the money to compete with them no problem, especially when they already have a base of engines like idtech and Forzatech etc.
There needs to be more competition in that market. Everyone should be asking for it and cheering on attempts to do that.
MS is in the best position out of any company to do it, so I think they should. I'm surprised there are some people who wouldn't want to see them do it.

 

[Sega Orphan]

I'm surprised MS hasn't entered this field, as a core tenet of their business is leasing software to enterprise businesses. Would seem like a natural thing to do given the amount of talent that they already have in-house in that area. Plus, there would likely be benefits for the Xbox gaming division, potentially both performance and financial gains, to use an engine tightly integrated with the GDK.

That's exactly my take as well. It's right down their alley. I would be shocked if they hadn't of discussed it.

 

[Sega Orphan]

Thats the problem with their tools. Everything specifically Xbox is tied to DX12 API. Which is worked on by Windows team. Direct storage would benefit them even more but their instructions on the console are held back by Directx12 development. So if your having issues with that on top of using a engine thats not finalized like Unreal 5 then your going to have tons of issues. ID tech 7 is bethesda, and supports multiple API's like Vulkan. So they are probably safe project wise.

But they also are making PC versions which takes a good amount of time to test.

Microsoft needs to get their shit together.

I agree. DX12U like DX11 before it are always released as a product in development. They have a ton of good extensions but they tend to make the efficient as they go along. The tech on it is really good. Just SFS alone will do a shit ton to help Memory management in games, but it hasn't been implemented yet as engines need to catch up.
That is one of the biggest issues for gaming tech. Devs work on games for around 4 years each. So the generation improvements come around slowly. Most devs are working on games now, and on engines they have already developed. They aren't going to stop production, rewrite their engines to now take advantage of say SFS, Direct Storage and Mesh Shaders, then go back to their game production. They are going to finish their game, then maybe tweak their engines and on to the next game. This takes years hefore it's widespread in the industry.

 

[MonarchJT]

they have basically the best studio in the industry regarding the use of UE. And by the way Sony premier studios don't even use it

 

[Sega Orphan]

And 3liteDragon winjer

First game using direct storage will be Forspoken. How much it is using it? Who knows.

So is direct storage DX12 dependent or is it tech that can be used on PS5 as well?

 

[Sega Orphan]

What is exactly is the business reason for that?
Engines gives very low profit… if not most were not fighting to survive.

Unreal Engine is a exception because games like Fortnite cover it.

Not everything MS does has a massive pay-off, rather it's about them creating ecosystems. For instance, they make no money from Direct X. They put alot on money into developing it, and it has innovated alot of graphics tech over the years, but yet they continue to do it. Same would go for a game engine. The majority of Fortnite money didn't go into paying for UE5, it went to cover the massive losses Epic have got from their game store.

 

[Amiga]

Game engines are not one size fits all. otherwise Sony would do it. But they do have a team that helps technically different studios using different engines. they likely share code for partial parts of engines.

 

[mrcroket]

My god... of these list only two engines are worth it, Id tech and Forzatech

 

[Sega Orphan]

My god... of these list only two engines are worth it, Id tech and Forzatech

When MS closes the deal with Activision they will have IW 8.0 as well which is a really high level engine, which they are also reworking as we speak.
Some of the graphics seen in Modern Warefare reboot was the best I have seen. The part where they go into the houses in the UK made my eyes bleed it looked that good. And all at 60fps.

 

[The Alien]

Slipspace
idTech

(also own Havoc)

 

[Craig of War]

They Have ID Tech and ForzaTech which in my opinion are 2 Engine that can go toe to toe with UE5

 

[alabtrosMyster]

Merging pieces of code like that is always a good idea! let's say they start today, plan... then develop for at the very least 4 or 5 years (I am sure I am very very optimistic)

Then, assuming there was no problem whatsoever and all the features are "ready" you start migrating the projects to the new engine (it's supposed to be the best at everything).

AAA games take 5 or so years to develop (often more), so let's say that everyone just pick up the new engine and they can start working on it as well as they did with whatever they were accustomed to, training takes zero time... Well that plan could pay off in 10 to 15 years! Hopefully the new engine will have kept up by then!

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Yes and no. If we look at UE4, there were plenty of third party engines which looked better than UE4 games.

Engine =/= graphics.

If your understanding is this incomplete you shouldn't be opining on this subject.

 

[Irobot82]

So IdTech has always been about using open source API. From OpenGL to now Vulkan. Does anyone think Microsoft will force them to switch to DX?

 

[SportsFan581]

Merging pieces of code like that is always a good idea! let's say they start today, plan... then develop for at the very least 4 or 5 years (I am sure I am very very optimistic)

Then, assuming there was no problem whatsoever and all the features are "ready" you start migrating the projects to the new engine (it's supposed to be the best at everything).

AAA games take 5 or so years to develop (often more), so let's say that everyone just pick up the new engine and they can start working on it as well as they did with whatever they were accustomed to, training takes zero time... Well that plan could pay off in 10 to 15 years! Hopefully the new engine will have kept up by then!

Everything starts somewhere. Unity and UE didn't drop from the sky either.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

Everything starts somewhere. Unity and UE didn't drop from the sky either.

Yes, but you can imagine a world where the engine switch affects the end products badly, even if it's arguably superior... Just because people are used to whatever it is they had (ID tech is pretty good, I don't see them gaining much for being forced to change to something else).

Either way, normally it's better to let a project team make these decisions, if anything picking up the tool that's right for the job... Or changing when it becomes apparent that the new tool will grant enough benefits for the problem of migrating.

That being said, the team that makes the next fallout/oblivion should be forced to use a different games engine... Or the project should be moved to a team that uses proper technology.

 

[Vasto]

With more to come.

 

[Louay]

Buy Crytek and get CryEngine with it

 

[Louay]

Well that's part of DX12U, so I'm sure all their devs have already integrated that into their engines. I think Hellblade II might be the first game to use it tbh.

Forspoken the 2 year timed exclusive PS Game will be first title to use Direct storage on PC.

 

[SportsFan581]

Yes, but you can imagine a world where the engine switch affects the end products badly, even if it's arguably superior... Just because people are used to whatever it is they had (ID tech is pretty good, I don't see them gaining much for being forced to change to something else).

Either way, normally it's better to let a project team make these decisions, if anything picking up the tool that's right for the job... Or changing when it becomes apparent that the new tool will grant enough benefits for the problem of migrating.

That being said, the team that makes the next fallout/oblivion should be forced to use a different games engine... Or the project should be moved to a team that uses proper technology.

You're talking about a hurried and forced switch among internal teams. I was talking more about MS releasing a Unity/UE competitor to the open market and leasing that to third-party developers, with internal teams switching over if/when that was a desirable thing to do. Considering possible cloud integration, etc. It seems like a natural fit for MS's typical focus on leasing enterprise software.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

You're talking about a hurried and forced switch among internal teams. I was talking more about MS releasing a Unity/UE competitor to the open market and leasing that to third-party developers, with internal teams switching over if/when that was a desirable thing to do. Considering possible cloud integration, etc. It seems like a natural fit for MS's typical focus on leasing enterprise software.

ID tech is already pretty much it.

UE is an engine, but it's deeply integrated with a bunch of services, assets libraries, etc. and it's used in schools to teach games creation. You don't displace it like that (however MS displaced Novell, Lotus, IBM, Netscape, etc.) so anything is possible.

 

[Chukhopops]

Im thinking because somehow people associate the unreal engine with ps5 after the epic demo. Just how all the ps5 people would go apeshit if kojima, from software or silent hill had an exclusive xbox game since they consider those properties sony.

I think that’s the reason indeed but that’s weird since all the studios you’d associate with high budget Sony exclusives are using in-house engines: ND, Insomniac, Guerrilla.

It’s just part of all the UE5 FUD that came last year with the first demo which supposedly would never run on any other platform.