Unity vs Unreal: Choosing the Best Engine for Your Game in 2024

As a game development outsourcing company, we at Pingle Studio see Unreal Engine and Unity not merely as development tools but more as a way to keep globalizing the industry. Our journey through these engines’ teamwork-based features and capabilities made us and our partners valuable players in our league. Both engines allow teams like ours to bridge the gap between creative ambition and technical execution. This article explores the nuanced roles of Unity and Unreal Engine in today’s game development ecosystem, highlighting their impact on the production processes and the way they facilitate the translation of diverse ideas into playable realities. 

What new Unity and Unreal Engine features help us make better games in 2024? 

As game developers, we’re happy that both Unity and Unreal Engine keep supporting their tools with high quality and constantly improving the user experience. 

Unity has long been applauded for its user-friendly interface and robust support system, essential for both seasoned developers and newcomers to the scene. The features we find indispensable in our daily operations include:

• Documentation: Unity’s extensive and well-organized documentation is a goldmine of information for every project. It provides our team with up-to-date guidelines, tutorials, and best practices, ensuring we can quickly learn and apply the latest functionalities to enhance our game projects.
• Knowledge Base: This is a very helpful resource for troubleshooting and learning. Unity’s Knowledge Base offers detailed articles and community discussions that cover a wide range of topics. This access to shared wisdom and experiences enables us to resolve complex issues swiftly, keeping our development process smooth and efficient.
• Issue Tracker: A transparent view into the engine’s development process, the Issue Tracker allows us to monitor and report bugs directly to Unity’s developers. This tool is vital for maintaining the stability and reliability of our projects, as it helps ensure that any engine-related issues are addressed promptly.

By integrating these features into our workflow, we maintain a high level of productivity and quality in our Unity-based projects, ensuring that every game we develop is built on a solid and reliable foundation.

Speaking of Unreal Engine, Epic Games’s commitment to providing powerful and versatile development tools is evident in the features that have become integral to our work:

• Blueprints Visual Scripting: Unreal’s Blueprints system is a must-have feature that enables rapid game prototyping and development without deep coding knowledge. It allows our game designers and developers to create complex game logic and interactions visually, fostering a more collaborative and efficient workflow.
• Level Editor: The Unreal Engine level editor is a comprehensive suite for designing and constructing game environments. Its intuitive interface and advanced toolset allow our team to craft detailed and immersive levels, providing a proper game experience for players.
• Static Mesh Editor: This tool is essential for creating and editing 3D models within the engine. Its powerful functionality enables our artists to fine-tune the appearance and performance of game objects, ensuring that each element within the game world looks how we need it to look and is optimized for performance.
• Material Editor: Unreal’s Material Editor offers a node-based interface for designing and applying materials to game objects. This feature empowers our visual teams to create realistic or stylized textures and effects, enhancing the visual appeal and atmosphere of our games.
• Niagara Editor: For dynamic and complex visual effects, the Niagara Editor is Unreal’s answer to next-generation particle systems. It allows our team to craft stunning visual effects that react to game events and environments, adding depth and life to our game worlds.
• UMG UI Editor: We always pay special attention to UI, as it is crucial for player engagement and usability. Unreal’s UMG UI Editor provides a robust framework for designing and implementing intuitive and visually appealing user interfaces, ensuring a smooth and enjoyable player experience.

Graphics and performance in 2024: Unity vs Unreal Engine 

The balance between graphics quality and performance keeps being one of the most important points of game development in 2024, especially when we talk about external development. With a spectrum ranging from primitive and stylized to photorealistic visuals, the choice of the game engine—Unreal Engine or Unity—can significantly impact the final product. For Pingle Studio, while the target graphics style varies with each project, performance remains the noticeable concern, ensuring optimal gameplay experience on intended devices.

Known for its ability to produce photorealistic visuals, Unreal Engine is a popular choice for projects where graphic quality is a critical element. The engine’s advanced lighting and shading systems contribute to its capacity to render detailed environments and characters, making it ideal for titles aiming for a high degree of visual realism.

UE also excels in performance optimization, particularly on high-end PCs and consoles. The engine’s robust architecture allows it to handle complex simulations and extensive world-building without compromising on frame rates. For game development outsourcing, this means that Unreal Engine is nearly perfect for creating visually stunning games that run smoothly on target platforms, provided the development team is adept at managing the engine’s resource-intensive nature.

Unity engine offers a different set of strengths, primarily its versatility and efficiency in handling various graphic styles and performance demands. While it may not always reach the high levels of photorealism that Unreal Engine can achieve, Unity is exceptionally flexible, capable of supporting everything from simple 2D games to complex 3D titles with stylized graphics. This adaptability makes it a favorite among indie developers and studios working on mobile and casual games, where the balance between attractive visuals and consistent performance is crucial.

Unity’s Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) is a testament to its commitment to customizable graphics rendering, allowing developers to fine-tune the engine to meet specific performance and visual quality goals. Furthermore, Unity’s lightweight rendering options and efficient asset management make it possible to achieve good graphics on less powerful hardware, such as smartphones and tablets, ensuring a broad market reach for the developed games.

Despite the differences in their graphical strengths, both Unreal Engine and Unity place a strong emphasis on performance. For Pingle Studio, this is where the focus lies—ensuring that games not only look good but also run seamlessly on their target devices. In outsourcing scenarios, understanding and exploiting the performance optimization tools and techniques available in both engines is key to delivering a product that meets client expectations and player demands.

For instance, both engines offer extensive profiling and debugging tools to identify and rectify performance bottlenecks. Additionally, they support various levels of graphical fidelity, allowing developers to create scalable experiences that cater to a wide range of hardware capabilities, from high-end gaming rigs to entry-level mobile devices.

Unity and Unreal Engine for porting

Both engines have ups and downs when it comes to porting titles to consoles such as PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch. Unity and Unreal Engine both offer robust solutions for this, each with its own set of tools and challenges. Understanding the technical nuances of these engines can significantly streamline the porting process, ensuring that games not only transition smoothly to different consoles but also maintain their core gameplay experience and performance.

Unity is known for its flexibility and developer-friendly approach, making it a preferred choice for many when it comes to porting games to consoles. Its extensive cross-platform support offers built-in tools and plugins designed explicitly for console porting. Unity’s consistent development environment across platforms means that developers can largely work with the same codebase and assets, minimizing the need for platform-specific adjustments.

For consoles like PS4 and PS5, Unity provides specialized tools and SDKs that align with Sony’s development requirements. These tools help manage specific hardware features, such as the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback on the PS5, allowing for seamless integration of console-specific functionalities.

Xbox One and Xbox Series porting benefit from Unity’s close integration with Microsoft’s development ecosystem. Unity supports Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, facilitating easier porting to the Xbox family by leveraging shared APIs and services between Windows 10 and Xbox.

Nintendo Switch porting with Unity involves handling the console’s unique hardware configurations, such as its detachable Joy-Con controllers and mobile-desktop hybrid nature. Unity offers a Switch-specific support package that helps developers optimize their games for this platform, addressing aspects like variable performance modes and screen orientations.

However, it’s worth mentioning that Unity is a little less friendly to porting work than Unreal Engine, especially when it comes to debugging functionality and compatibility. However, an experienced team of Unity engineers doesn’t consider this a big deal. 

With its high-end rendering capabilities, Unreal Engine is often the go-to for developers aiming for top-tier visual quality and performance in their console ports. It provides comprehensive support for the latest console hardware, ensuring that games can leverage the full potential of each system.

For PlayStation and Xbox consoles, Unreal Engine offers detailed documentation and dedicated SDKs that facilitate utilizing the consoles’ advanced features, such as real-time ray tracing on the PS5 and Xbox Series. Unreal’s strong performance profiling tools allow developers to fine-tune the game’s performance to match each console’s capabilities, ensuring smooth and responsive gameplay.

Nintendo Switch porting in Unreal Engine requires careful consideration of the console’s hardware limitations compared to more powerful systems like the PS5 and Xbox Series. Unreal Engine provides specific guidelines and tools for optimizing game performance on the Switch, including handling its lower memory capacity and graphical processing power. This ensures that games ported to the Switch still deliver a quality experience, albeit with necessary adjustments to fit the hardware’s constraints.

Technical Considerations in Console Porting

Porting games to consoles involves more than just adjusting to different hardware specifications; it requires an in-depth understanding of each platform’s ecosystem, including its development environment, user interface guidelines, and certification processes. Both Unity and Unreal Engine offer extensive documentation and community support to navigate these aspects.

Maintaining clear documentation and a modular codebase is essential in external game development, where projects often shift between different teams or studios. This practice facilitates smoother transitions and collaboration, especially when porting games across multiple console platforms.

Moreover, performance optimization plays a critical role in the porting process. Developers must ensure that games not only run well on the target console but also adhere to the platform’s standards for load times, frame rate stability, and memory usage. Both Unity and Unreal Engine provide profiling and optimization tools to aid developers in meeting these performance criteria.

Unity and Unreal Engine for VR games 

Despite still being a niche industry, VR games are evolving. For external game development studios, understanding these engines’ technical capabilities and considerations is crucial for creating compelling VR experiences.

Unity’s engine is prized for its adaptability and user-friendly environment, making it a popular choice for VR game development. Its support for a wide range of VR devices, including PSVR, PSVR2, Oculus Quest, and Pico, provides a versatile foundation for creating cross-platform VR experiences.

• PSVR and PSVR2: Unity offers native support for PlayStation VR, allowing developers to integrate Sony’s VR hardware directly into their game projects. With tools designed to optimize for the PlayStation’s VR capabilities, Unity simplifies the process of creating immersive environments and interactive gameplay that are well-suited for Sony’s ecosystem.
• Oculus Quest and Meta Quest: Unity’s integration with the Oculus SDK facilitates seamless development for these standalone VR devices. The engine’s compatibility with Oculus’ development tools enables features like hand tracking and room-scale VR, allowing for more immersive and interactive VR experiences.
• Pico: Although a less mainstream device than Oculus or PlayStation offerings, Unity’s support for Pico devices ensures developers can target this growing market, providing a comprehensive suite of tools to leverage the hardware’s VR capabilities.

Unreal Engine also does a big work in terms of VR technologies. The engine’s powerful rendering capabilities and advanced VR tools make it a good solution for creating high-fidelity VR experiences.

• PSVR and PSVR2: Unreal Engine’s compatibility with PlayStation VR hardware enables developers to create visually stunning and immersive VR games. The engine’s advanced graphical and physical simulation capabilities can be fully utilized to enhance the VR experience on Sony’s platforms, taking advantage of the PSVR2’s improved resolution, tracking, and haptic feedback.
• Oculus Quest and Meta Quest: Unreal Engine provides comprehensive support for the Oculus platform, including the Quest line. Its ability to deliver high-quality graphics with efficient performance makes it a strong candidate for developing complex VR experiences that can run smoothly on standalone Quest devices.
• Pico: While Pico may not be as prevalent in the VR market as Oculus or PlayStation, Unreal Engine’s support ensures that developers can target this platform, exploiting the engine’s powerful graphical and performance optimization tools to create compelling VR content for Pico users.

Artem Kuzmenko, Pingle’s QA specialist, working on a VR project

Developing VR games with Unity or Unreal Engine requires a deep understanding of VR-specific design and technical considerations. This includes managing motion tracking, ensuring low-latency head tracking, optimizing rendering performance for high frame rates, and creating intuitive interaction models suitable for VR controllers.

Both engines provide extensive documentation and tools geared explicitly towards VR development. For example, spatial audio, haptic feedback integration, and stereoscopic rendering are critical aspects that both Unity and Unreal Engine handle adeptly, providing a toolkit for developers to create immersive and responsive VR environments.

The ability to adapt and optimize game assets and mechanics for VR is a big deal for external development teams. This involves not only graphical adjustments but also rethinking game design to suit VR’s immersive nature. Unity and Unreal both offer profiling and debugging tools to help fine-tune performance and ensure a comfortable, engaging user experience across different VR platforms.

Collaboration between art, design, and technical teams is crucial in developing VR games. Both Unity and Unreal facilitate this collaborative environment with shared assets, real-time editing, and version control systems that are essential for the iterative nature of VR development.

Unity vs Unreal Engine: asset stores

Working with pre-made assets is a big part of developing games both with Unity and Unreal Engine. Integrating a wide range of assets efficiently can significantly streamline the development process. Both engines offer extensive asset stores, each with unique characteristics and benefits, influencing the workflow and capabilities of development teams.

The Unity Asset Store stands out for its vast and diverse collection of assets, ranging from 3D models and animations to scripts and complete project templates. This variety is a boon for external development teams, offering a quick way to prototype, iterate, and implement features without starting from scratch.

• Technical Integration: Unity’s asset store integrates seamlessly with the engine, allowing developers to import assets directly into their projects with minimal hassle. The assets often come with comprehensive documentation and support, which is crucial for teams working under tight deadlines or with specific technical requirements.
• Variety and Customization: With assets covering virtually every genre and use case, Unity’s store enables developers to find exactly what they need, whether it’s a specific type of environment, character model, or a specialized plugin. Moreover, many assets are customizable, enabling teams to tweak them to fit the specific needs of their project.
• Cost-Effectiveness: The Unity Asset Store provides a cost-effective solution for many external game development teams, especially smaller studios or those working on budget-sensitive projects. It allows them to acquire high-quality assets at a fraction of the cost and time it would take to create them in-house.

Unreal Engine’s Marketplace is renowned for its high-quality assets, many of which are tailored specifically for high-end game development. The assets available are often created with Unreal’s advanced capabilities in mind, focusing on high fidelity and technical sophistication.

• High-Quality Standards: Assets in the Unreal Engine Marketplace are generally of high quality, with a strong emphasis on visual fidelity and technical performance. This is particularly beneficial for development teams aiming to create games or experiences that require a high level of detail and realism.
• Engine-Specific Optimization: Assets purchased from the Unreal Marketplace are optimized for Unreal Engine, ensuring smooth integration and performance. This is a significant advantage for external developers as it reduces the time spent on asset optimization and troubleshooting.
• Blueprints and Technical Assets: The Marketplace is also a rich source of technical assets, including Blueprints. Blueprints are pre-made logic blocks that developers can use to add complex functionalities to their games without extensive coding. This feature is particularly useful for teams with limited programming resources but a need for sophisticated game mechanics.

In external game development, where projects often involve collaboration with various stakeholders and adherence to strict timelines, the efficiency of working with assets may save whole games. Both Unity and Unreal offer tools and features that facilitate the easy integration and management of assets.

• Asset Management Tools: Both engines provide robust asset management systems, allowing teams to organize, update, and collaborate on assets efficiently. These systems support version control and can handle large asset libraries, which is crucial for maintaining consistency and quality in larger projects.
• Technical Support and Updates: Access to technical support and regular updates for purchased assets is another critical factor. Both Unity and Unreal ensure that assets in their stores are compatible with the latest engine versions, providing developers with the necessary support to keep their projects up-to-date.

While Unity’s Asset Store is celebrated for its variety and accessibility, Unreal’s Marketplace is distinguished by its high-quality, engine-optimized assets, each serving different needs and preferences in the game development landscape.

The conclusion

At Pingle Studio, our experience with Unity and Unreal Engine has taught us that these aren’t just development tools; they’re essential elements that help us bring global gaming visions to life.
Both Unity and Unreal Engine are not just engines but gateways to globalizing and revolutionizing game production. The continual evolution and support of their features enable us to craft superior games tailored to the diverse needs of 2024 and beyond.