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Nintendo's Engineers Have Embraced Unreal Engine (engadget.com)
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."
Nah, that's Id Tech 6.
The Nintendo Switch is unreal.
Chalmers.
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?
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.
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.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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...
Like Unity on the Wii U, you'll still probably need to be a licensed Nintendo dev to even get access to building for that platform.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Correct.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The article itself makes no effort to sustain this premise. Whatever engine Nintendo uses for 1st party is irrelevant. Sony using in-house engines likewise has no bearing. Miyamoto's apparent concession that Japanese devs lagged behind in technical skills is somewhat interesting, I guess.
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- the Wii U was a contrived attempt to replicate the original Wii's success by doing exactly the same thing (especially its controller, trying too hard to be as original as the Wiimote)... and without recognising that the casual gaming market the DS and original Wii had pioneered had started moving on to tablets and smartphones by then.
The fact that- from what I've heard- a relatively high proportion of the original Wii consoles tended to end up gathering dust in cupboards after the initial burst of enthusiasm and novelty wore off probably didn't help convince the same people to rush out and buy a Wii U. Particularly as the marketing- and name- didn't make clear that it was an entirely new console, and not just a slightly improved Wii.
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ACs are now picking comments at random to comment on the summary itself. Why? I don't know!
https://www.bing.com/search?q=... God, how dare you It's unfair you deny, ignite and close your eyes
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. 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.
They weren't helping. I remember. I was there.
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 well for some time adding to more and more developers not in favor of developing in an extreme closed garden (Nintendo console) has made them worse. Their current stand is hoping more developers will come back to develop for their Nintendo Switch instead of iOS or Android by adding a bridge to make it looks more open (until you read the Nintendo publish license/ cost).
This AC didn't reply to the top comment, but a comment in response to the top comment, though.
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).
No you don't, but even if you did it's irrelevant to the question at hand.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is absolutely not true: '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."' I'm not familiar with that quote, and I recognize that there's a difference between being friendly towards third parties and getting a lot of third parties developing for your platform. So pointing to the broad support which Nintendo has received for many of its platforms isn't necessarily disproving anything, but I do know that the original NES was created specifically with third party devs in mind - one of the requirements when developing the hardware was that dev kits should cost no more than $100, in order to make it as accessible as possible to outside developers.
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.
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.