most popular next gen engine.

 If it is hands down the new unreal engine then is there any other commonly used next gen engine

epic totally has the engine licensing niche carved out, it totally grabbed the market by the soft dangly bits, they've been licensing out unreal technology since 1.5 or something, they already have a large customer base (like, ubisoft and gearbox don't even bother with their own engines any more) - unreal 3.0 is easily going to be the most used engine of 2007, probably 2008 and beyond as well

especailly when you consider that it's very available in console versions too

but crytek is looking to license out its engine too - obviously it's strictly a high end pc engine - and it'll probably be late 2008 before we see anything else running in the crysis engine at least, and probably much later

and then there's also id's next engine - i believe they learned a lot from the doom 3 engine, and are working on a brand new engine to showcase thier new ip, and that'll probably be very sellable

so yeah, i'd say they're the big three - unreal 3.0 will easily win it, especially as it moves to 3.5 and the others start to lag (because epic spends much more time developing its technology than it does its games), but there's also the crysis engine and whatever id puts out that - at least on paper - could be very popular

valve is also probably working on a complete overhual or a complete rebuild of source, and valve enjoys licensing out its engines a lot, but i doubt we'll see much more of source now

Er, next gen? There's no such thing as "next gen" for PC gaming, everything is "current gen". Anyways, the Unreal 3 engine is definitely the most popular upcoming engine... CryEngine 2 does look amazing, but I don't see it being used in a hell of a lot of games in the near future... I don't think the original engine got used by any major developers to produce games, even though it was just as impressive at the time. EVERYONE wants the U3 engine....SuperBeast

I very much agree. Crytek had big hopes of licensing the Far Cry engine all over the place but not one single other game used it. Even Max Payne got more engine licensing! (well, El Matador is the only one I know, but one's still better than zero, right?) As to the Doom 3 engine, it's good for them they've got pals in the industry, or no one would be using it.

The only way to see a broad use of your engine nowadays is to push it in the modding-world as Valve does. Of course those modding licenses don't really bring cash in directly... but they popularize the games based on the engine. How many Half-Life 2 copies were sold on account of attractive mods I wonder.

I'm not sure about there only being "current-gen " for the PC though. The progress in graphics goes hand in hand with the consoles' capabilities. The XBOX 360 releases and all of a sudden we get a new iteration of the Unreal Engine.

On a side note, what I'm really happy about is the LOOK of the new Unreal engine. As it's going to be used by a lot of major licenses that I like, I'm immensely glad to be done with that low-res cartoonish s**t that was Unreal Engine 2. It basically ruined what little bit of fun was left in the poorly realized Brothers in Arms series. Perhaps the next one will actually look serious even if it still plays as a tactical shooter in which you can't order your squad to get behind a fence because you can't SEE behind the fence :roll:

I very much agree. Crytek had big hopes of licensing the Far Cry engine all over the place but not one single other game used it. Even Max Payne got more engine licensing! (well, El Matador is the only one I know, but one's still better than zero, right?) As to the Doom 3 engine, it's good for them they've got pals in the industry, or no one would be using it.
 

sabazios

I disagree with you there.Crytek licensed the CryEngine 2 to EA.They said that they are cooking up a new FPS but notghing more.I'l see if I can find the news thing.