“The early results have been mixed”
So far, Epic’s well-known toolset has powered many recent AAA titles, making Unreal Engine 5 one of the most prominent game engines of the current generation. While some projects, such as The Matrix Awakens, have been impressive, others have fallen short of expectations for a ‘next-gen’ title. As a result, the Digital Foundry team has examined the engines mixed’ results thus far.
DF examined five fully-UE5 powered titles, including Robocop: Rogue City, Immortals of Aveum, and others, as part of a new analysis from the tech-focused team. You can watch the video version of this above, but if you just want a quick summary of what the outlet thinks of the engine’s console performance thus far, here’s a quick summary of the analysis:
“Ultimately, I think we are seeing some mostly positive indications from UE5 in console games. The core graphical tech clearly scales well to console hardware, delivering some really impressive visual results in problem areas for real-time rendering.
A game like Robocop is delivering top-tier console visuals with the help of UE5, for instance. On the performance front, some games do struggle, though in some cases this seems to be more at the hands of the developer than the UE5 tools.”
Speaking of performance, Immortals of Aveum struggled with it back in August. Thankfully, the team has been diligent with post-launch updates, but EA’s new shooter was rough at launch, demonstrating that UE5 does require work on consoles in some situations.
We’re a little disappointed that the engine hasn’t quite delivered on what was teased in those early tech demos – and in The Matrix Awakens. Hopefully, with an experienced team like Xbox’s The Coalition in charge, we’ll start to see more consistent results from Epic’s latest game engine.