Do you think given the amount of money Rockstar and Take Two have put into GTA 6 and the amount of development that went into it we might see Rockstar/Take Two license the Engine/tech they use or at least parts of it to other developers? Imagine if you would, down the road Crackdown 4 or Watchdogs with some of the tech plus what they might added if you would. I know they haven't in the past share their engine, but this one seems to really push open world much further than any current competitor compared to when GTA 5 compared out.
It is not just the engine that makes the world quality of GTA6, it is assets and relentless optimisation. One only needs to look at the best and worst of UE5 to see that the problems are not down to the engines themselves but the choices made during development.
Licensing is a totally different model to internal engine development, they need support, documentation, training programs etc. and UE5 is far easier for other studios to find developers with experience. It is of course technically possible for Rockstar to do all of that, but it is not their business model and in my opinion very unlikely.
Making an engine for general use is a lot different than making one for internal use only. They'd have to plan it from the very start so I highly doubt it!
It would be nice to see more 'crime' games though (as mentioned on the podcast). They seem to have largely disappeared.
I mean, I wouldn't rule it out completely but as MattGPT and EventfulCitrus have already covered, a commercial grade engine is quite a different beast to an internally hand-polished, hobby-horse engine for specific effect like RAGE... could they retool it? Sure, but the significant investment would require an equally compelling case for revenue and a market that I'm not sure exists
Now, would I personally love to see more choice than UE5/Unity by default on the market? Abso-tootin-lootly. But reflective of software development at large, it has become so complex that it seems like only the top or the bottom of the market is it actually worth it. And realistically, they are going to keep making so much cash from the GTA and RDR franchises, and specifically GTA 6 online. Exhibit A: GTA 5 online
And here they are, pivoting to UE5, presumably because it makes more financial sense to take a COTS product and configure that for their needs rather than maintain in-house presumably. Which, previous comments aside, can't say I disagree with the logic.
Rockstar is unlikely to license out RAGE to its competitors but I do wonder if they share tech with other Take-Two Studios like 2k.
One of the reasons animations/physics look so good is Euphoria animation system middle ware that is integrated into RAGE. It was created by a company called NaturalMotion and Lucas Arts was another company that licensed it for the Force Unleashed which has way better animation and physics than the recent Jedi games. Take-Two bought NaturalMotion to keep it in house. Basically 2k sports should be able to use Euphoria, their physics/animation system has been stuck in the PS2 era, while the athletes look more realistic, their animations look robotic.
@sanmansan interesting insight, thanks! Because of this, I am now aware of how much I don't know about game engines, other than the obvious fact that there are many moving parts... sounds like a rabbit hole!
rage is a weird beast because it has very complex things going on, but f$·ks up the animations on cutscenes, I wish they did a table tennis again, or something weird, I am sure it would look sick
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