Why is Unreal more popular than Quake?

It has more commercial games. Why is it so? Is is because of tools, hype, abilities, libraries (havok...)...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Un ... gine_games

I know poll has too broad questions, it is just to get a picture ...

NOTE : I am not sure whether to count Source engine (Quake 1 mod by Valve).

[scar3crow]

It is an official arm of the Epic business structure. Pick up any issue of GameDev magazine, there is always at least one Advertisement Disguised As an Article by Mark Rein about the latest additions to Unreal, and how awesome it is and how much customers love it and to contact them about it. It comes front-loaded with a lot of middleware, is recognizable, usually is on the up and up with the trendiest methods and snazzy ribbons and can be linked to high selling franchises.

This is in comparison with id Tech which is more of "Oh hey, you want to license it? Okay, lets talk sometime soon." which I understand is Valve's approach as well.

And yeah I wouldn't even consider licensing Source for a commercial project, if I'm going to stay with the Quake engine, its going to be DarkPlaces. Cryengine would be a better one to list.

... GameDev magazine, ... Advertisement Disguised As an Article by Mark Rein ... lot of middleware, ... trendiest methods and snazzy ribbons and can be linked to high selling franchises.

Ah. These guys from Epic are smart.

Wiki on Mark Rein "vice president of Epic Games ... gives a monthly update in the magazine Game Developer where he provides a short update on the state of the Unreal Engine.". I see.

I wouldn't even consider licensing Source for a commercial project

Why not?

Cryengine would be a better one to list.

True. It seems I can't edit the poll.

You mixed game engines with languages (Javascript) and middleware (Flash), this is pretty confusing.

You mixed game engines with languages (Javascript) and middleware (Flash), this is pretty confusing.

True. But You can sell games made in these too I guess.

You mixed game engines with languages (Javascript) and middleware (Flash), this is pretty confusing.

True. But You can sell games made in these too I guess.

Then you forgot Java (Minecraft).

the fundamental difference is that the quake engine is marketed as 'quake', 'quake2', 'quake3', 'doom3' engines. whereas the unreal engine is marketed somewhat separately from the game itself. its provided in smaller increments, which are easier to cope with. Its object orientation means that whatever you created for the previous version can generally be updated automagically, assuming you inheritted from the correct classes. you can more reliably upgrade from from one unreal engine version to the next, more frequently, than with quake where you would be upgrading from quake3 to doom3 for instance.
its just a more stable environment.
id make sweeping changes, and yeah, they get cool stuff out of it, but each and every time, everything else has to change, especially the entirety of your game code. Consider the changes you would need to make to port hexen2 to the quake2 engine, or to the quake3 engine. the unreal engine *still* runs uscript, and while there have no doubt been many changes, a complete rewrite of all code has not been required, as far as I'm aware (unline any of q1->q2->q3->d3 - q1->q2 being the least severe).

frequent minor revisions also mean more releases of unreal tornament. the lack of major overhauls means that much of what was available in the previous version is still present in the next. which means each release is more polished on initial release, rather than having to patch in lots of polish later.
Note how there are games released for UE3 before the respective version of unreal tournament was released. Conversely no id-engine game was released before or even during the year of the respective id game, despite the fairly close link between id and raven.

if I were a commercial game developer, yeah, I'd say the unreal engine is a safer bet. sorry. at least this is the impression I get.
on a personal basis, I still prefer id's stuff. I never was able to get the unreal editor to stop breaking my geometry any time I moved something.
my opinion, your milage may vary.

Depends what I want to make.

For anything that takes place mainly indoors, I'd probably base it off some GPLed idtech (3/4) engine or a variant. Good tools, proven tech, lots of free knowledge (and code), close to my personal experience.

Only if large open areas (or crazy physics) were required would I use Cryengine or (preferably) idtech4 with megatextures (ETQW...), or maybe UDK (have no experience with that though).

All hypothetical of course.