Nintendo's Engineers Have Embraced Unreal Engine (engadget.com) 40
Tom Regan, writing for Engadget: If there's one thing that Nintendo has struggled with, it's enticing third-party developers to create games for its consoles. But according to VentureBeat, the company is looking to change that with the advent of the new Switch. At an investor Q&A session, Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that Nintendo engineers have been learning how to use third-party development tools like the Unreal Engine. It's not much of a surprise, given that the Switch, like the Wii U before it, supports the Unreal Engine. But the fact that Miyamoto has opened up on the subject shows that Nintendo may be softening its sometimes frosty stance on third-party developers. That relationship has never been too friendly, with former president Hiroshi Yamauchi saying in 2000 that third-parties are "not helping the industry at all."
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Nah, that's Id Tech 6.
Re:ACs are now picking... (Score:1)
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Have to say it... (Score:2)
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And the battery life sucks
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At least they had the sane decision of using an USB-C port on the thing, so you can plug those battery packs.
Probably was the best engineering decision nintendo did in decades.
Super Nintendo (Score:2)
Wii U support? (Score:2, Informative)
Er, what? I've been using Unreal Engine for 2 years now. The entire time I have been told, by the engine itself and the folks around it, that there is no Wii U support. I have certainly not observed any.
Sooo...when did this mystical Wii U support come into being and how can I find it?
Re:Wii U support? (Score:4, Informative)
The Wii U is supported by UE3. There's a bunch of UE3 games on the platform.
Armature was planning to port UE4 to the Wii U to release Bloodstained, but it seems like they're going to drop that and replace it with the Switch since the Wii u will have been long discontinued by the time it comes out.
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Correct.
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Like Unity on the Wii U, you'll still probably need to be a licensed Nintendo dev
Which isn't nearly as hard as it was back in the late 2000s when Robert Pelloni did the Bob's Game publicity stunt. In July 2016, Nintendo dramatically opened up developer registration [nintendo.com]. In particular, a small family business operating out of a home office is no longer banned so long it can come up with about 3000 USD for the devkit.
So nowadays, the route to market for a startup developer of gamepad-oriented games is Itch, then Steam, then PlayStation or Nintendo.
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Could a 14 year old write his (or her, if AmiMoJo is watching) own engine?
Hmm. So look at it this way, they're getting 95% of something they wouldn't have had otherwise.
Leaving aside that 3k per title per quarter is exempt anyway, which you conveniently omitted because you're a 'tard.
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No you don't, but even if you did it's irrelevant to the question at hand.
Re:A 14 year old can 'Master the Unreal Engine (Score:4, Informative)
The 5% gross fee is only after the first $3000 made per quarter. Also this royalty fee is only for the free version of unreal engine that has no monthly/upfront cost. Epic offers alternative licensing schemes if a developer would prefer to pay upfront for UE4 instead of paying a 5% royalty. https://www.unrealengine.com/c... [unrealengine.com]
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From the internet, the cost of paying upfront is $750,000 (may vary depends on source).
Also remember 5% is cheap to start but it adds up depend on your revenue. Let's say you get 42k in a year, that's (42,000 - (3000 x 4)) x 0.05 = $1500 royalty cost.
Unless you earn over 15mil, I don't think any 14 year old will pay upfront.
Back to topic, the point is not really directly related to 3rd party engine but about their view on license and development control with business issue. Nintendo own business isn't doing
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Surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
Surprised? Not in the least. Wasn't Super Mario Run made in Unity? Yup, Nintendo is doing what other major companies are doing, using existing quality software tools.
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The Wii was a fluke that happened at exactly the right time, hence why Wii U tanked. (removing the Wii, the Wii U had the expected number of buyers from the slowly decaying trend on their total console sales)
I don't know that the original Wii was entirely a fluke; I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and credit them with doing something different to MS and Sony's chasing of the traditional, mainstream "serious" gaming market by going for the casual market (which, to some extent, the DS had already had success in pioneering).
But basically, yes, I agree with you regarding the timing and the fact the casual market had moved on by the point the Wii U came out. I said much the same thing myself a few days back [slashdot.org]-
Nintendo using Unreal = no bearing for 3P games (Score:2)
In the year 2000... (Score:1)
They weren't helping. I remember. I was there.
But the real question is.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Have the finally embraced a reasonable thread model every other console adopted a decade ago?!?
(Last I saw the WiiU still uses yield() with cooperative threads, making it nigh impossible to do a straight port from anything that made reasonable use of a pthread-like API).
Nintendo has been positive toward third parties (Score:3)
Now, that's going back quite a few years, it's true, but so is quoting a company president from 2000, who has been replaced twice since then.
Nintendo throws in the towel (Score:1)
So, based on the new found information, we can assume that Nintendo became tired of themselves developing every game for their proprietary platform and reducing their risk to other individuals.
Cool.