Let me tell you about a little game called American McGee's Grimm. This was a short and sweet, episodic little game with a lot of quirky-fun visuals and gameplay dynamics. You played a little gnome going around spreading darkness and mayhem inside a fairytale world and once you've covered the world in enough darkness and grossness, the fairytale ending would play out in a much more violent and gruesome way than how it began. OK, so far, so good. Nice casual game, would even be a decent mobile game.
The problem is that American McGee has an ego so huge it interferes with his ability to properly market and position his ideas, and for some reason thought this was AAA title material or it should be worthy of a AAA development process. So step one was "license the Unreal Engine". Except the Unreal Engine, with its support for shaders and all that crap, made the game run intolerably slow even on PCs with on-mobo NVIDIA parts, let alone the shitty Intel graphics parts many PCs had at the time. Porting to Wii would have been fucking impossible; arguably, the game would have thrived on Wii as an interesting counterpoint to Hannah Montana's Wiggle-Your-Stick Concert Bash and the usual Wii fare.
So yes, there's room in this business for all sorts of game engines. And if you don't know how to write an engine that fits your game, or at least choose a fit from a wide market, maybe you don't know enough about the kind of game you're making and who would be playing it.
The problem is that American McGee has an ego so huge it interferes with his ability to properly market and position his ideas, and for some reason thought this was AAA title material or it should be worthy of a AAA development process. So step one was "license the Unreal Engine". Except the Unreal Engine, with its support for shaders and all that crap, made the game run intolerably slow even on PCs with on-mobo NVIDIA parts, let alone the shitty Intel graphics parts many PCs had at the time. Porting to Wii would have been fucking impossible; arguably, the game would have thrived on Wii as an interesting counterpoint to Hannah Montana's Wiggle-Your-Stick Concert Bash and the usual Wii fare.
So yes, there's room in this business for all sorts of game engines. And if you don't know how to write an engine that fits your game, or at least choose a fit from a wide market, maybe you don't know enough about the kind of game you're making and who would be playing it.