EA Switching To Unreal Engine 5?

After buying DICE, Electronic Arts tried to standardize on the Frostbite game engine across studios. The engine behind the Battlefield series of games was then used to make key series such as Madden and FIFA. But it hasn't all been roses with two high profile "failures" Mass Effect and Anthem being directly blamed on the Frostbite engine.

Interestingly, EA are currently hiring Unreal Engine developers... specifically to support Unreal Engine use across the entire company. Is this an indication the EA is moving to using UE5 across the company? It sure looks like it.

[jackmelcher]

Having conversed with several former EA engineers. The biggest problem with Frostbyte was the lack of support to make the tools needed to make non-Battlefield games. This forced studios to make a huge lift, to not only make the necessary tools, but to also maintain a fork of Frostbyte that may become incompatible with changes made by Dice. Also, any support for the Frostbyte had to be with a Dice Engineer, which causes engine development bottlenecks, especially if studios are trying to fix issues.

[nolram]

No, this is not an indication of them moving from Frostbite. EA has been using multiple engines for years, with their different substudios using different ones. Its not just Frostbite. Respawn, for instance, uses their version of the Source Engine.

[aldo_d]

thanks for those videos, love getting interesting news delivered with some background information! Hope to see your channel will pass that 200k mark

[existentialselkath]

EA isn't swapping to UE5, they've just given up on being so stubborn about using frostbite for everything.

I understand the advantages of a proprietary engine, but they were using it for stuff it was never designed for, they seem to have finally acknowledged their mistake

[TackerTacker]

They should release Frostbite as Open Source if they ever switch fully over to UE5 so that people can learn from it.

[steven]

It's time to learn UE5 and Unreal C++ now, It's way easier than you thought!

[magnusrexus]

I think EA should have made a free version or a limited version or Frost bite free for the public to use. Exposure to the public garners an audience for would be Amateur developers to mess around with.When I was young unreal was available and could be used to make mods for multiple game. which kicked started many careers.

[Safetyman]

It makes sense: Jedi Fallen Order out-did both Anthem and Andromeda and got very good reviews. That success is what the shareholders like, so don't be surprised if EA's future AAA games get delayed while they switch engines.

[kutingkutingultimate]

I can't believe that EA is hiring Unreal Engine developers! The boss of Electronic Arts made a decision to switch to Unreal Engine 5.

[jmalmsten]

While Unreal is impressive to an unreal scale... It is a bit scary to see them gobble up so much of the market. When an entity becomes the only game (engine) in town, they tend to stop innovating and instead only focus on profit marigins...

[rod-abreu]

EA has been using Unreal and Unity for some games for many years, man. That doesn't really tell much.
Back years ago they were deciding between Unreal or Frostbite for Fifa, and when Fifa did the transition to Frostbite, all other sports games did the same transition, following Fifa.
But aside from that, many games are already done with Unreal.

[MRDDev]

So finally they can acknowledge Frostbite was not an all around engine.

[cintrond]

I think it would be ok for you to use add block while doing a screen capture. Doubt anyone would hold that against you.

[shayneoneill]

I think part of why they are specifying Unreal in those job ads is Unity, whilst pretty great, isn't actually a AAA engine, at least to the big dogs, because the core engine is a black box whilst UE5 has source available, and theres gonna be a lot of geeks out there that have hacked on those engines guts, and in that cohort you'll find the skills to deploy on other engines. Though yes, it does seem like SOME sort of UE5 is being deployed. That said, if they do transition fully to UE5 I strongly suspect they wont be paying the same rates the AA and BBB studios are (15% over 1 mil). I suspect it'll be an old school deal, they'll flip Epic 20 or 30mil for a no royalties licence to do whatever they want with UE5 as long as its in-house to the EA group (Ie not make Crytek's mistake of selling a no-royalties engine to amazon who then turns around and open sources it (whoops!). Presumably re-negotiating in the whenevertimes when UE6 comes along, unlikely for a good long time since the paint hasnt even dried on UE5.

[Kewl_Zomb]

I heard sims 5 are also being prototyped in unreal

[SIRA]

the battlefront 2 starwars games have gorgeous graphics, on max settings some of the maps are just spectacular. the duels and the storm troops look like they came out of a live movie. so frostbite can def make something look really good. but it seems ue5 is more beginner friendly?

[DougieBoy]

Looks like EA might is finally giving the studios options for engines instead of forcing them to use the Frostbite engine, which is a good thing.

[darknetworld]

We seen Frostbite engine as delay for battlefield not sure if they have some docs which made harder for dev code to work fast. As for ununreal engine it is open src and they knew how to improve as well many feed back help improve the game engine. Frostbite game engine I feel there no direction or modular setup. If coder were to hired it take longer to work if all code base.

[Kinos]

I heard reports that Bioware chose to use the Frostbite engine. I'm not sure if this is true.

[igorgiuseppe]

looks like we will face game engine consolidation