but wondered what after all the hassle of upgrading Red Engine to produce Cyberpunk (and look amazing) they'd jump to UE5, cost is clearly the obvious answer but I thought I'd asl.
Any expertise to share?
So this practically in-house vs. third party engine. Both options have advantages and disadvantages. Advantage for in-house engines: highly customisable for your specific needs. Fast support because your in-house engine guys work directly on your floor.
Disadvantages: it requires more budget (time, money, personnel); you have to do the documentation on your own, which can be disaster if your engine guys leave. Also, if something doesn't work, you have to figure it out by yourself. It takes longer to get new personnel on board because they won't have any prior experience working with your engine.
Third party engine advantages: well documented with lots of resources. On-boarding of new personnel is way easier because the engine is widely available and they most probably have experience with it. And you don't have to develop this damn thing from scratch.
Disadvantages: might not be tailored precisely to your needs and need customising which then requires additional Q&A. May come with quirks inherent to the engine you might not be able to solve and have to work around (e.g. while in-house Frostbite engine had a map size limit not suitable for ME Andromeda; didn't support a RPG-style inventory or party system which needed to be implemented and adjusted for Inquisition and Andromeda; animation rigging was not suitable for third person RPGs. These kind of limitations or quirks may lead you to build an engine just for your specific needs).
With many things it comes down to what do you want, hence what do you need. A flat head isn't a bad tool, but is difficult to work with if you need a phillips. Of course you can still try to use a flat head but it's gonna much easier with the proper tools.
In regards to UE5, it comes with a lot of tools out of the box, is based on an engine used for roughly two decades, is being worked on without you spending any resources (when you don't need to convert to major releases), know-how is easy to acquire, whether with documentation, third party support from Epic, or personnel experienced with the engine.
When time and budget constraints are a concern, which always is but even more so when you don't work independently, you might take the disadvantages of UE5 when the most extreme alternative would be: investors say no and you won't release anything.
