There’s unreal engine, fox engine, enfusion engine, Frost Bite just to name a few off the top of my head. What makes them different? Why can’t there be a single unifying engine?
I understand the part about licensing and costs, but beyond that is there really any difference and if so, what is it?
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Same reason why there isn’t one unified photo editing software, or one programming language or one car, or one electric guitar or….
Different ones were developed to be good at different things, and take different approaches to solving similar problems. Which one you use depends on the type of game, the target hardware specs/platform, what the game needs to look like, what kind of UI it needs, what technologies the developers are experienced with, what 3rd party libraries and plugins and content are available for it… etc.
A broad generalization is that Unreal is more focused on high end hardware and looking pretty, and is particularly good for anything first person or photorealistic. It’s very often used for FPS games, Archviz, Film, VR, Car Configurators, showcasing industrial design products etc. (But could be used for anything). It has a super awesome art pipeline, but can be a bit less approachable for hobbyists on the programming side.
Unity is more focused on working on every possible platform, it’s more approachable for programmers, and has a lot more documentation/tutorials/assets/community around it, so is popular for hobby developers and indies. You could use it for anything, just like unreal, but it is generally harder to get it looking quite as pretty, but easier to get it working on all kinds of weird platforms.
Then a lot of AAA companies have their own inhouse engines.. If you’ve got the money it can be worth avoiding engine licensing costs, and also being able to customize the engine for your exact use cases. I’m sure Ubisoft has a bunch of super Assassins’ Creed specific engine tools for example..
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