With their new licensing arrangement of FaceFX technology from OC3 Entertainment, Epic Games (the
developers behind upcoming Xbox 360 title Gears of War and the Unreal Tournament series of
games) are one step closer to cobbling together the ultimate middleware engine for game developers who
want to spend more of their time creating games and less time reinventing the wheel.
Licensing fees for Unreal Engine 2 range from $350,000 plus royalties to a flat $750,000 (royalty-free). The company has inked more than a dozen licensing agreements in 2005 alone. This explains why Epic never wastes an opportunity to pimp the Unreal Engine, even when they were in the midst of demoing Gears of War for us last month at the Tokyo Game Show. To an extent, Gears of War is just a tech demo to prove the viability of Unreal Engine 3 for next-gen development. It'll be an impressive game, no doubt, but perhaps mostly because it needs to be impressive to drive licensing revenues.
Why does this matter to you and me? Well, for one, good middleware can keep development costs of next-gen titles in
check. It can also shorten project durations because companies who use solid middleware theoretically have to spend
less time and money to create games. That means more fun. That's the theory anyways. In practice, a development team
still needs to execute. Duke Nukem Never Forever has licensed the Unreal Engine, but still
appears to be nowhere near launch.
[Thanks, JamesO]
