Most developers are now shifting to Unreal Engine 5. Despite its capabilities, the engine’s widespread adoption raises concerns about creativity stagnation, outsourcing inconsistencies, and monopolistic control by Epic Games.
Unreal Engine 5 is proving to be the kryptonite of Sony Interactive Entertainment's mid-gen console, the PS5 Pro.
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Waiting on the UE6 demo followed one year later Tim telling us developers are the problem because they're using UE6 stuff rather than focusing on optimization
I'm pretty sure a large portion of it is developers, the latest Silent Hill's performance isn't as awful as Silent Hill 2's, but I hope UE6 will be a noticeable improvement over performance anyway.
PS5 Pro is an amazing value though. at least before we get another price hike. Hopefully they dont follow microsoft with a second price hike.
And you know who's fault it is, not only on console on PC to, it's you people the buyers who keep giving money to developers and supporting UE5 games. Only one way to force their hand stop buying UE5 games, they will have no other choice but to change game engines. I'm doing my part on PC not buying anything with UE5, I wouldn't even take any UE5 games for free😃
This is a pro URE 5 article, you know that right?
I'm personally all for new improvements, changes, engines etc etc. If its done correctly, it can change gaming dramatically and for the better.
I know it's a PS5 Pro article but consoles have issues to with UE5 games, not only PC. If devs keep using UE5 people will keep giving backlash the cycle will not change. Maybe UE6 will change that, but I have no hope. If UE6 can run at the performance level like ID Tech 8 while still being an open world engine then that would probably be the best game engine by far.
If UE5 sucked as bad as you make it out to, it wouldn't be universally adopted as the most popular engine in game development. I use it all the time, it's a great tool, even though it has its flaws.
It's used because it's cheap to license. So of course big corps. will choose cheap over something more expensive and better, then face backlash later. I would personally would use ID Tech 8 if they would license it out, and I'm sure with some work it can be used for open world games.
You got a lot of down votes, but you're right, people need to have some more discipline and vote with their wallet, if they do a crap job, don't buy it. Or if you absolutely have to have it, at least wait for a steep discount, they'res so many games out, you can afford to wait a couple of years if it comes to that.
we're just reinforcing bad behaviour at this point, so developers keep doing it.
Lost cause, mate. If buyers were gonna do anything positive about gaming problems we wouldn't be having broken releases or macrotransactions.
I'll just do my small part and avoid all UE5 games, there are so many other games to play on PC, I'm good. 😎
Ummmm they can still technically use Unreal Engine 4 if they wanted or other developer engines.
The problem is UE5 is HEAVY on CPUs, and EXTREMELY HEAVY on GPUs if you’re trying to use all the features it has, and the current consoles don’t have the best CPUs (solid for what they are), nor the best GPUs especially when it comes to RayTracing and AI Upscaling. They’re entry level in regards to what Unreal Engine 5 needs.
You’ll have to wait until FSR4 comes to PS5 Pro (technically it should be able to work on PS5 / SX / SS since there’s a mod running it on RDNA 3 and RDNA 2 currently).
Or Wait for a PS6 which should have a much better CPU, and much better RayTracing and AI Upscaling features to run the engine sufficiently. UE5 is the new can it run Crisis currently.
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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has blamed the developmental focus on top-tier hardware for the Unreal Engine 5 optimization issues seen in games.
I mean who is the company marketing all their new features, ray tracing, textures, AI, etc… on RTX 5090s at every tech demo…….
It’s a great engine, but it’s power hungry right now and requires top-tier hardware to take advantage of the features it offers. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad engine, it just means there needs to be a UE5-lite version or UE4-Pro version which implements some features of UE5 while keeping it user and developer friendly.
I believe him. I’ve seen varying degrees of success with games using UE5 and some pull it off.
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The headline is a bit click-baity. But his words of wisdom here are essentially: “they keep leaving optimization for last” (paraphrasing).
In well-developed studios like DICE, Epic Games, Kojima Productions, and Rockstar Games, optimization starts happening during feature implementation. First, features (Well thought out & R&Dd) are added, then once they work, the optimization process begins right away.
It is not an easy method. It takes time, but the results stand.
This is an old workflow. The newer generation of developers often work fast and dirty far too often.
A comparison here:
"Modern" approach:
Dev Adds Feature > Dev Moves to Next Set of Features > Milestone is Hit > Dev Adds Feature > Dev Moves to Next Features > Milestone is Hit > Dev Begins Optimization > Dev Still Optimizes > Dev is still in Optimization??
By the time optimization starts, you already have so many systems relying on old shit workflows you wrote, what did you expect to happen? Of course shit starts to chug, stutter and break.
Older approach, adopted by some I've listed there:
Dev Adds Optimized, Well-Thought-Out Feature > Dev Further Optimizes > Dev Adds Optimized, Well-Thought-Out Feature > Dev Further Optimizes > Milestone is Hit > Rinse and Repeat
More cooks in the kitchen, more hands on the code/design, more feature needs in general, more changes during development to respond to poor decision making or chasing a newer idea.
You have no clue what you are talking about. Optimization always comes last and every studio you mention works using the first method you list.
Learn before you speak. It can't come at the very last. Any practiced developer will tell you that.
Optimization is a "journey" so to speak. Otherwise systems snag, chug, collapse or features get wholly removed during that last stage because they can't make shit run.
Ok I guess my 25 years in the industry working specifically at some of the companies you mention means nothing.
It's the engine, UE4 did not have this many issues as UE5. ID Tech always made the better engines. I'm sure developers can make it work for open world games, and there would be no stuttering issues.
id Tech makes an engine typically for the specific game they're building. It's not general purpose and cannot be compared.
UE4 did have as many issues as UE5; you can't be serious. UE4 is where the modern stutter struggle originated!
"UE3 is the worst. Games all look the same grey and orange. And the stutters..."
*UE4 comes out* "What a piece of shit engine. So many stutters and runs terrible while not looking better than UE3. UE3 was great. Bring it back."
*UE5 comes out* "What a piece of shit engine. So many stutters and runs terrible on my potato PC. UE4 looks and runs better. We don't need UE5, UE4 is enough!"
Idk, Id Tech engines does have trouble on some of their games, especially on PC, see Wolfenstein, Old Blood in particular didn't run so great for me despite my computer obliterating the tech spec recommendations.
Former Returnal developer Ari Arnbjörnsson is currently working alongside CD Projekt Red to eliminate stuttering issues in Unreal Engine 5.
Daily reminder that almost ALL Stuttering issues are caused by common bad development practices and are not inherent to the engine.
Tell yourself that, when Epic has people like this specializing in resolving the stuttering that's inherent to the engine...
They always have people helping show methods, but those methods are already in the engine. And I said almost all issues. There are many methods of working inside it. For the methods that don't work, that's when you have new features added to help with the situation.
The engine is a tool at the end of the day. If you don't know how to use the tool properly of course you're going to have issues.
Give this thing a watch if you are interested, it is literally the presentation in the article, by the very same UE developer mentioned here, he shows EXACTLY how you can avoid these pitfalls with the stuff that's already in the engine: https://www.youtube.com/wat...
You can also choose to ignore the facts and continue to spread misinformation of course. :P
While that's true, there are def a handful of UE games that have little to no stuttering. So while it may be that "by default" the engine is very prone to stuttering, it is equally true that it is possible to avoid the issues.
"he shows EXACTLY how you can avoid these pitfalls"
If you have to write in or perform certain logic to avoid "pitfalls", that means the "pitfalls" are inherent to the engine. Your own words acknowledge that it has problematic default behavior lol.
@Tacoboto -
Not every practice is going to work for every engine. It requires finesse and understanding. You can't expect to throw shit in there without care and expect it to work without any worry or attention to optimization and detail.
That's idiotic.
Do you blame Photoshop when you throw in 200 Smart Objects at the same time and it starts to lag? Just because you CAN do certain things, doesn't mean you should do it in every scenario.
It’s the engine and 1 million different PC configurations as a combo.There has always been smaller issues because of all the configurations on PC but this isn’t small. Console doesn’t have the stuttering issue because if closed system and other factors.
They hired a guy to fix it because they know it’s the engine.
Give this presentation in the article a watch if you are interested, by the very same UE developer, he shows EXACTLY how you can avoid these pitfalls with the stuff that's already in the engine: https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Yeah it's just a coincidence that almost ALL UE5 games have stuttering issues. If you are using an engine where it's easy to make it stutter without you knowing it, then maybe the Engine should be made more stutter proof or give documentation what not to do or how to fix stutters on their OWN engine. If you can poop your engine to stutter on 7800x3d and RTX 4090 you have done something wrong.
Okay, I see where you're coming from! :) But there is a reason I said "common bad development practices " that's the key sentence here.
Most of those practices have developed with the age of Online Tutorials, ironically. A blessing and a curse. While there's some great advice out there, but for every single one, you have five people running ridiculous code on Tick, tons of hard references (e.g.a hard reference is basically like loading the actual asset into memory, while a soft reference is like loading a link to an asset that can be done async on a separate thread) horrible garbage collection and level streaming methods.
Ever since UE4 was released, this issue has been compounding. With the wholly publicized release of UE5, it was bound to reach this point.
There are many ways to skin a cat in UE. It's both its strength and weakness. Its true power really lies in the hands of the beholder for better or worse.
If you've got Arc Raiders hitting 60FPS on a GTX 1080 with UE5, that alone should say something.
And the Epic team is doing their best by sharing how they develop their games with the developer teams to help out with best practices. It's just the nature of the beast at this point. Currently, for the future of UE, an A.I. assistant is also being built to help developers with the best way to do things according to documentation. So there are steps being taken to make onboarding even easier.
Unreal Dev here, you are mostly right, its an intensive engine with a visual coding practice that's heavier on CPU's than just using C++ (which most devs will use both in tandem) but UE also has lots of features to help you identify problems like this, such as a memory grid system that shows you to view all your assets and code and what takes up too much memory plus a lot of other helpful tools, I would say with your average AAA title its laziness on the Devs part but when someone is making the next Cyberpunk or Red Dead or GTA and the scope is much higher it definitely has issues on such a large scale
So 8 days ago they posted Silent Hill 2 remake "Creating the ‘Otherworld’ of SILENT HILL 2 | Unreal Fest Orlando 2025". So they must have collaborated with blooper team to make this game if they present it on stage. In release this was lamented as one of the worst hitching games by Digital foundry.
"UE also has lots of features to help you identify problems like this" seems that even when collaborating with Unreal someone forgot the check those. ooops :D
Also they are so proud of SH2 that they present it on their stage, but can't still fix all the issues. I have read that sure it's better now, but not still up to standard. At this point I don't think that Unreal really cares about their engine reputation.
Would have been nice if they choose Decima over UE5 but I understand it was likely a decision based on resources. There's likely more devs familiar with UE5 over Decima so it'll be easier to get the help required to make this (hopefully) massive game.
Decima for the win
This really troubles me, given that Unreal Engine 5 games are not that performant this gen.
Perhaps the next iteration/update of Unreal Engine 5 will be much better however this does not negate the fact that most games look a bit alike using the same engine and tools.
CD Projekt Red, 343 and EA have shifted to Unreal Engine 5 which is a shame because RedEngine and Frostbite were solid game engines.
At least Capcom still uses RE Engine, Sony has Guerilla's amazing Decima engine and Ubisoft uses Snowdrop which keeps surprising us with stunners like Avatar and Star Wars Outlaws.
And we still have ID Tech 7
Most games should shift to unreal 5. It is proven and Epic is giving everyone a sweet deal on it. It's developer friendly and you don't have to pay them until your game starts making money
Stutter Engine 5, POS. ID Tech engines for future PC games. Indiana Jones runs so smooth on PC, I have no issues at all.