Are there any AAA games made with Unity, and if not why not?

So as far as I am aware the majority of AAA titles do not use Unity, why is that and what features and or components are lacking in Unity that put AAA studios off?

Or are there some AAA Unity games in the works in which case let's share.

Ideally to answer this question you work for a large studio and have considered but rejected Unity for a AAA title, or you are working on a AAA title in Unity in which case can you tell us more.

 

I would imagine that this is largely due to Unity being designed for a more open approach. Where engine's like Unreal are geared specifically towards, FPS games, Cry is geared towards broad, open environments, etc., Unity doesn't specialize in anything.

Personally, I think games like Bad Piggies, from Rovio would be classified as AAA (despite its casual market), and that uses Unity.

 

So because Unity does not have a built in terrain engine to to match Crytech or an in built fps framework/workflow to match Unreal / Frostbyte it cannot compete?

Bad Piggies looks like great fun and maybe it is the AAA title of the mobile generation. I'm betting they didn't use Unity's 3D physics engine, they probably ported Box2D.

So is Unity just a really great mobile 2D game engine wrapped up in 3D space?

 

Max and the Magic marker was made with Unity, and it was pretty AAA. It did release on the iOS, Android(I think ), and PSN, as far as I know.

 

I've seen some AA games here at some posts done with unity. I must say, the engine doesn't make the game AA, the developer team can make it. The engine can make you r life easyer or not. And just for the record Unity has alot of great features you can use to create AA games.

"Of course UDK has more time on earth so they have more tools... But hey unity has C# support hahahah that's enaugh to me"

 

But don't you think that Unity could do with a AAA title, it's equivalent to Crysis, Doom, Battlefield, Mass Effect, XCOM, Hawken, Mech Warrior, Mario, Sonic, Metroid?

 

Depends what you call AAA.

If you talking about graphic quality, Shadow Gun definitively is a AAA game made with Unity.

If you talking about large studios using Unity, I understand Square Enix is using Unity in many upcoming games. Nintendo also lined up a deal with Unity to serve as an SDK option for the Wii U.

You got to keep in mind most big studio AAA games are not in production just for a year, they are in production for a very long time and Unity did not enter the "commercial solid" for at least the last two or three years. Any big studio that picked Unity may not have released or announced the game just yet.

You are giving a way too big of a range. I'm sure it can pull a Mario, Sonic or Metroid. Those have never been insanely heavy games, just extremely well designed from an artistic point of view. FPS tend to be extremely... problematic mainly because how demanding the players are. I'm sure Unity can pull "A" FPS, but not sure if it can pull out something at the level of quality of a game that has a custom engine that only does what is required to make the FPS look insanely well.

 

+1
But I would add another point of view. Credibility and ego of the gamers :
"This game is built with UDK or CryEngine..." > "Wow, this is a great game engine!"
"This game is built with Unity" > "What, this engine? sucks" or "Unity?!"
Unity must first gain credibility not only with the studios but also players. How many of them know that Shadows Gun is built with Unity?

When a game is built with UDK or CryEngine this is ALWAYS mentioned. There is a reason for this..

JP

 

Not the reason you think, though.

Its because Unreal and CryEngine requires people to display their logo, it is part of the licensing agreement. Unity allows us to hide the logo if we pay for Pro. That may be a good thing; it also may be a bad thing.

 

I think its just a case of culture. Most devs in big studios are already used to some tools and just dont want to change.
When Unity came around, they already had their inhouse tools and were already using Unreal for those stunt (layoff everyone after game is done) projects.

 

Interesting aside Unity check out your game and either pay you to hide the logo or to promote it.

I'm taking about games that push the boundaries of today's hardware gpu's dx11+ not mobile handsets that are still around dx7 level features circa 2000 on the PC.

Mind you it won't be long before mobile gpu's start catching up, e.g. the power VR 6 series gpu is being promoted as having DX11 features.

 

There are a few things to keep in mind. One is the biggest strength in Unity is cross-platform capabilities. I am sure their XBox/PS3/Wii export functions are not there just for show. I bet there are enough large publishers with deep pockets licensing them, but these are confidential contracts negotiated over the phone and, same as we, likely not required to display a Unity logo anywhere. So I bet there are console titles out there that are running in the Unity Engine, they just decided not to mention it.

Anyways, if you go deep into the PC and push it to it's limits, you will also likely end up blocking yourself from exporting to the older console hardware out there. I would imagine anyone that has published a PC title using Unity would not be pushing things too far to keep their options open.

Unity 4 also happens to be opening the door on DX11, I don't think it was an option before that.

I personally never been a huge fan of cutting edge graphics. Gorgeous looking games can be done on older hardware if you don't relly too heavily on the graphic capabilities of a device. Just look at Mario Galaxy and how gorgeous it looks in a Wii, a device that can sometimes barely handle old TV standard resolutions.

Smart use of textures and artistic taste will take you extremely far.

Oh eventually. Tablets and Smartphones are the future!!!

 

I'm interested to know this question ?
really why?
good question !!

 

I will DEFINITELY be displaying the Unity Logo... Proudly

 

Arowx since you keep pointing up hardware intensive games especially, i think the answer is pretty easy. Simply why testing out other engine that has yet not been proven on that field and while probably most AAA studios are already suited and trained for most common AAA game engines if you have engines that are proven to work and render results required. Probably the only reason why studio would use Unity is if they are new, and if they are low on income which doesnt suits for commercial licenses of those huge engines.

 

Janpec, so it's a chicken and egg situation then, as Unity has not laid a AAA egg/game it is not classed as a AAA chicken/game engine.

 

My current project is definitely going toward AAA quality... and it is all in Unity... IT IS ALL ABOUT THE ART AND IMMERSION... I have pretty much made assets that can easily look damn close to a game like Skyrim

 

Look at the game Skyrim... What does their engine have that Unity's doesn't? Skyrim's engine consists of, bump mapping, parallax mapping, crappy dynamic shadows(Unitys are far better), bloom, anti-aliasing, ect... All direct x 9 effects... Now Unity 4 has even more potential with direct x 11..

Now, lets take a look at UDK. Yes, they have some cool FX and features... But none of them are even being used... Pretty much all the games designed on that engine are made for consoles... So what are you worried about..? You have more than enough features on Unity to create a game that could look exactly the same as battlefield 3 on a PS3 and more....

 

What people from Big game studio says: (my colleague when we had evaluate engines):
"A big team can't work in Unity.
The pipeline is made for a team of 10 people max."

+ When you are a AAA compagny you need the source code. And the source code is not cheap
If you add everything (price for source code + engine + each patform), for a team of 200 people, Unity is not cheap anymore
AAA company thinks project by project, so don't sell them that Unity can be reuse for their next project they don't care (they are trying to survive with the current project). Taht's stupid, but that's how it works.

Unity thinks it's by adding special effects that they will convince AAA company but they are wrong.
AAA company wants a clean pipeline production. They want to be able to do what they want (source code), and not be dependant of any other compagny.

Maybe 100 people can already work with Unity without problems, but Unity don't show it. Is it true or false ?

Some of my colleague had already work with Unity. Some had access to the source code and they didn't found it clean (which suprise me, maybe it has changed since).
Other complained that they weren't able to optimise the rendering pipeline properly.


I push my colleague to use Unity. More and more are convince. But I'm a minority.

 

, In the experience of many AAA game developers I have spoken to and my own number crunch testing, Unity's problem for AAA development isn't graphics, its engine scalability and lower tier hardware performance. I can always hire a better artist..

Exactly.

 

I've also heard before that Unity isn't suited for working with in large teams, or even smaller. The whole collaboration pipeline seems to be lacking. Can anyone shed some more light on this issue?

Really interesting to hear what you say Wild Factor since you seem to be able to look at this from a AAA company perspective which is unusual at the forum. Please share more

 

A lot of guys say that it's all the artists that make the game graphically good and appealing. It isn't all the artist. you could have the best AAA Forza-quality cars or whatever and put them in a not very graphically enhanced engine(Unity is decent, just got as good as others) and still not have it looking as good, even with the best shaders in Unity. The engine is a lot of what powers the game and including it's graphics especially.

 

Not at all what I'm saying. Think of it from the developers point of view:

"We want to make a great FPS. What engines are designed to deliver the best FPS?" Unity does not come up.
"We want to make an MMO. What engines are designed to deliver the best MMO?" Unity does not come up.
"We want to make a massive, sandbox world. What engines are designed to deliver the largest environments?" Unity does not come up.

Its not to say Unity can't make a great FPS, MMO, etc, but it hasn't defined itself in any specific category. Unity is designed for people who say "I want to make video games, but I'm not sure what kind", or "I want to make lots of different types of games, but its just me and I don't want to learn 50 different engines."

The other obvious strength is when someone (like Rovio) says, "I want to make a game and port it to EVERYTHING." Then Unity comes up.

 

Warsoup is 100% AAA!! Although still under development!

 

And I thought that game was dead.

 

Wasteland is being done in Unity. I think that would qualify as an AAA title. Wasteland 2 is the sequel to the 1980s game Wasteland 1, which was the direct prequel and/or inspiration to Fallout 1-2. The same people basically worked on both.

That said... Doing a AAA-title means you have cash, and then you have access to experienced people, and then the toolbox choices are vast and varied. With that, you probably want as much control of the code as possible, and that means paying for an engine with source code access, like Unreal Engine.

 

I don't think Fallout had any connection to Wasteland, other than trying to emulate it.

 

Both are Interplay titles, originally, and Brian Fargo worked on directly or indirectly with all three of them in leadership roles of Interplay. He leads the work on Wasteland 2 now.

 

So I see. I thought Wasteland was an indie title. (Maybe Interplay was indie at the time?)

 

"I don't want to re-learn everything when I make a new game?" Why does Unity not come up? I know that for a AAA studio's they just have to adapt but would it not be better to stick with one engine and become ridiculously good at using it?

 

Its a matter of selecting the best tool for the job, which is not always (rarely, in fact) the tool you're familiar with.

 

Would it be best tool, or proven tool? I don't see why Unity can't do all that Cryengine and UDK can but Unity will run anywhere you through it?

 

Unity is a more general engine than the others. It can do any kind of game, but no one kind as easily as a specialized engine. Other engines are specialized, though, like open world games in CE or first person shooters in UDK. Unity isn't specialized enough for a company looking to make a game in any specific genre.

 

Look how many games go out every day, then look at their engines. Count how many actually use Cry or Unreal. It's not that large of a number. And the ones that use it generally are not "picked" but instead sold. Some one from every major engine maker likely was all over the development house that used the engine, all fighting each other attempting to make their engine look better than the other one and attempting to sell the thing.

It's rare that an engine in this form just sells itself. For Unity to ever be used by large studios, Unity must have very aggressive salesmen pushing it

Edit to expand: and at this point you need to have a track record to actually prove Unity is "the proven tool". This means you must show off AAA games done with the engine. This is why games like Unreal Tournament and Crysis exist. They are not just "games", they are high budget tech demos that don't only show how a game made by the engine can look, but also how well they can sell.

 

How would I enable the splash screen for Unity games?

 

I totally agree. People are attracted to quality and because there are little AAA games done with Unity, that leaves advertising. How much advertising is out there for the Unity engine? Not much. Let's hope that changes.

 

Embrace three kingdoms by Nexon is one of the largest projects that fits your definition for an AAA title except high-end graphics. 15 billlion wons budget (worth about 15 million dollars), 100 devs according to their announcement and commercials everywhere in Korea.

http://3p.nexon.com/gameinfo/feature.aspx

 

Maybe they should make a game then, or get another team to do it... Avert Fate looks nice with DX11 and a full AAA team making it, it would be great! Plus then they could have the shaders etc in a tech demo of Unity (Or given a level away free!) then Developers win, AAA teams see what Unity can do, Gamers stop whining about Unity graphics and get a sweet game.

 

But is it Unity based, and if so, is that fact advertised?

 

Yes. It's unity based. You can see download link for unity player in the official site. Nexon is advertising Embrace three kingdoms as a cross-platform game based on Unity engine.

 

Yes, it is clearly on the front page.

 

I really wondering if the average game cares what engine a game was made of.

 

What I have noticed, this may just be coincidental. Is that most indie games that use their own engines tend to do better, however I believe that its just personal preference. For example Limbo took roughly 7 years to be fully realised, although the game itself was made in 1 year. The company is now using unity to work on limbo 2. The reason why a lot of people are moving to unity is the ease of not worrying about making the engine.

 

Hawken done in Unity... that is interesting idea!!! Closed Beta 2 starts tomorrow! Go join!

www.playhawken.com

Btw, Hawken pushes UE3 pretty hard. I doubt it can be reproduced in Unity.

 

Those that make their own engines are probably more skilled, but now it makes no sense to make a engine with Unity at hand so they just use it.

Why not?

 

The graphical algorithms in unreal are far more optimized than unity.

 

Not talking about marketing here. There is quite a bit of Unity marketing going on in developer sites and publications, but thats not the point. This is the kind of stuff that does not happen because some one saw an ad. This is the kind of deals that happen because a salesman knocked on your door and spend hours and weeks on convincing you that the product he was offering was the best option for you.

 

Making an engine makes a lot of sense. Unity can not handle everything and some people enjoy coding an engine themselves. I am currently working on a 2D engine in C++ for fun and may be specific only to one game. That being said most people prefer working with what they are comfortable with and having control over everything as you do in a public engine inhibits this. That being said unity is quite good for either developing small games or prototypes that if more functionality is needed that unity can not provide you can therefore create your own or find another.

I like unity for its non gametype specific targeting. Specifically because it is easy to make games in and is very user friendly. However I believe it somewhat draws programmers into a sense of simplicity. So someone only knowing unity scripting is unable to write code outside of unity therefore skills are not as transferible. However this is better then no programming experience at all.

 

I've noticed a lot of Unity games that are still indie but getting closer to the A rating tend to not spend time on their controls so the game feels like it's lagging, I'd say most players would find that an issue and blame the engine.

 

You're doing this for fun, no one I know has enough money to work on a engine for one game for seven years.

Why is being easy bad? It is good if it is simple, you can still do advance stuff with C# and Plugins... its user friendly and that is good, you just said why Unity is better than purpose built engines.