How might the Unity engine changes effect Fire Emblem?

[Fabulously Olivier]

Fire Emblem Engage was built on Unity. Unity seemed like a viable engine for the series going forward.

 

However, Unity is planning to screw over all of its game developers with a retroactive royalty change based on unique downloads, rather than purchases. This makes the engine unfeasible for most franchises, especially niche and indie ones, and will likely result in a mass exodus to Unreal.

 

So what do we think of Fire Emblem's future in this? Do you think it will transition to Unreal? Go back to the Warriors Engine? Develop its own?

[Interdimensional Observer]

First, lawsuits are coming if Unity tries to enforce these changes. -Or at least that is what a portion of the Internet would have you believe.

As for Fire Emblem...

• In-house engines I suppose enable a certain flexibility to attune it for whatever projects a company has in mind. But, developing them takes time and resources. And since only the one company is using them, you won't find anyone skilled in it from outside the company and you have to train any new employees to use it. Worth it? Well, Nintendo has the funds to do it no doubt. Doesn't mean Intelligent Systems should though.
• Unreal seems like a nice choice? A beloved workhorse.

Unity's strengths from what I've been reading in the comments were console/PC & mobile compatibility. And that Unity is easier for 2D development. Being Nintendo, Fire Emblem will be Ninty consoles only, no need to align it for mobile or other systems/PC too. And, FE has moved well on from sprites to the third dimension.

If Intelligent Systems has already begun work on the next Fire Emblem -likely b/c the franchise is doing well- and they chose Unity for it, we may need to tack on a ...a few months? delay to its release to transition off of Unity. IDK how long it takes to convert from one development engine to another.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Interdimensional Observer

[MeteorPhoenix]

I'd be really surprised if those changes went through as they are, especially them being retroactive. I dunno about the US, but I'm pretty sure you can't do that in the EU.

[lenticular]

If IS/Nintendo have FE projects in Unity that are completed or close to completion (eg, the rumpured GotHW remake) then they'll just go ahead and finish and release them anyway. The Unity license changes might make the game less profitable, but it won't be as much of a loss as just shelving the game.

Beyond that, it depends. Hard to say at this point exactly how much of what Unity is trying to do will stick. Retroactively changing licensing agreements seems all kinds of shady to me, and I would not be at all surprised to see legal challenges against that. There's also the possibility that enough developers make noises about switching to other engines that Unity get spooked and walk back the whole thing. And the possibility that Nintendo are big enough to have their own unique bespoke license with Unity and not have to worry about any of this anyway. Basically, there are way too many unknowns to be able to make predictions for the future.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter that much. At least, not from the perspective of those of us who are buying and playing the games. Choice of engine typically doesn't have all that much impact on the overall quality of the final games, except in cases where there's a vast amount of institutional knowledge to the workings of one engine, or the engine is particularly well- or ill-suited to the type of game beign made. And I don't see that either of those are the case here. I think the worst realistic case scenario for us is that the development cycle for whatever future game gets extended a while as they refactor code and learn the foibles of a new engine

[vanguard333]

I imagine they will anger Intelligent Systems, since Fire Emblem Engage was made using Unity and the changes are being made retroactive.

My hope is that this means they will switch from Unity to a better engine. As for which one, I have no idea. I think at least a few turn-based games have been made using Unreal Engine, including one that used a hexgonal grid, so I think it would be viable for future FE games. As much as I'd like to see IS use an engine it itself made, the sad reality is that in-house engines are becoming increasingly less feasible for game studios; Square Enix learned that the hard way in the PS3 and PS4 era, where their in-house engines: Crystal Tools and Luminous, were unfinished piles of garbage that couldn't handle most of the games Square Enix wanted to make at the time (directly causing the 10-year-long development nightmare Final Fantasy XV went through).

To be honest, even before this, I had my concerns about Intelligent Systems using the Unity engine for Engage, mainly because I remembered that Unity merged with that malware company almost a year ago. To be honest, I'm surprised that that wasn't the thing that made everyone want to stop using Unity.

[Armchair General]

On 9/13/2023 at 3:51 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

IDK how long it takes to convert from one development engine to another

Basically, you're restarting from more or less the halfway point whenever you switch game engines. It kind of depends on exactly how you made the character models and animations; but everything that isn't the audio or the script has to be redone in some capacity

[Fabulously Olivier]

On 9/13/2023 at 8:47 PM, vanguard333 said:

I imagine they will anger Intelligent Systems, since Fire Emblem Engage was made using Unity and the changes are being made retroactive.

My hope is that this means they will switch from Unity to a better engine. As for which one, I have no idea. I think at least a few turn-based games have been made using Unreal Engine, including one that used a hexgonal grid, so I think it would be viable for future FE games. As much as I'd like to see IS use an engine it itself made, the sad reality is that in-house engines are becoming increasingly less feasible for game studios; Square Enix learned that the hard way in the PS3 and PS4 era, where their in-house engines: Crystal Tools and Luminous, were unfinished piles of garbage that couldn't handle most of the games Square Enix wanted to make at the time (directly causing the 10-year-long development nightmare Final Fantasy XV went through).

To be honest, even before this, I had my concerns about Intelligent Systems using the Unity engine for Engage, mainly because I remembered that Unity merged with that malware company almost a year ago. To be honest, I'm surprised that that wasn't the thing that made everyone want to stop using Unity.

It frankly seems to me like that merging with the spyware company was done to create their download detection software to facilitate this business model change.

[vanguard333]

3 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

It frankly seems to me like that merging with the spyware company was done to create their download detection software to facilitate this business model change.

...That actually makes a lot of sense; I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case.

Incidentally, I was planning on making my own video game using the Unity engine a bit less than a year ago, and then the announcement of the merger ended that idea, as I was very suspicious about the merger and what it would mean for the engine, and I didn't want to in any way support a malware company.

The good news is that I found a far more suitable engine for the game a few months later, though progress hasn't been good as I'm still learning that engine and I've been focusing on things like finishing my novel.

Edited September 15, 2023 by vanguard333