Epic
It's safe to say Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the current, de facto industry standard middleware when it comes commercial game development.
Not only is it used on some level by most major publishers and developers, it's increasingly the favored client solution by MMOG developers while architects, film companies and educators are licensing it as well.
There are two main reasons for this status. The first flows from Epic's historic reputation as one of the prime first person shooter studios thanks to games such as Unreal and Unreal Tournament.
The second, which is more pertinent to Unreal Engine 3, is the engine's transformation from its original PC focus into a robust cross-platform technology, with the company claiming to have the most popular engine across PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
It certainly comes with plenty of bells and whistles. As well as the DirectX 10-class game engine, which includes the 64-bit HDR rendering system Gemini, there's a flexible animation system which links into the engine's integrated physics, and the Cascade particle effects system.
Development tools include the UnrealEd content creation suite, and the Kismet visual gameplay language and Matinee cinematic system, while the Java-like UnrealScript simplifies in-game programming.
Unreal Engine 3
Features: HDR renderer including advanced shadowing; texture streaming system; modular material framework; integrated animation, physics and audio; Cascade particle system; Kismet gameplay scripting; Matinee cinematic editor, UnrealEd world editor; UnrealScript
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Integration with Other Technologies: Beast, Bink Video, Digimask, DivX, Enlighten, FaceFX, GameSpy, Kynapse, morpheme, PhysX, ProFX, Rendez-Vous, Spark, SpeedTree, VoiceIn
Cost: Available on request
Released Games Include: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (Gearbox), Army of Two (EA), BioShock (2K Boston), Gears of War (Epic), Lineage II (NCsoft), Mass Effect (BioWare), Unreal Tournament 3 (Epic)
Games in Development Include: All Points Bulletin (RealTime Worlds), Halo Wars (Ensemble), Various (2K), Various (Activision), Various (EA), Various (NCsoft), Various (Square Enix), Various (THQ)
www.unrealtechnology.com
Epic's Gears of War
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On a related note, I'm pleased to find that there's more support for Linux than I previously thought. I'll have to look at a couple of them closer.
> It's safe to say Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the current,
> de facto industry standard middleware
It's safe to say that it's currently the most popular 3rd party engine for AAA current-gen titles. That's not really the same thing as being a de facto industry standard. You wouldn't say the Ford Focus is the de facto standard for UK cars, just because it has the largest market share. By definition a de facto standard has to be so completely ubiquitous that anything other than it seems odd - that's not Unreal 3's status.
Like: Unity, Unigine, StemCell, NeoAxis, Quest3D.
And much more, there are Game Engines very good and the prices is more low.
Shouldn't this article be called "List of expensive commercial engines" ?
Why not the Nebula engine?
Or ... well.... the list is long: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
Game engines have come a long way in the last few years and the commercial engines that had the market to themselves need to realise that they face competition and need to restructure thier licensing. the engine with the best tools and licensing will make a lot of money.