Why doesn't Bethesda license out id Tech 6?

With the Nintendo Switch gaining popularity, I can't help but think that Bethesda is missing out on an opportunity to profit off of its popularity simply by not licensing the engine for Doom 4.

Considering the graphical intense nature of Doom 4, i reckon it was nothing short of a massive undertaking to bring it to Switch and is definitely a testament to how scalable id Software's engine is. If given to the hands of other developers, I reckon that more people would make games for the Switch because of id Tech 6's scalability, more people will buy the Switch and Bethesda will be making money off of people wanting to make games for the Switch and will first go to them for a game engine that allows for Switch/PS4/XB1/PC development, rather than the PS4/XB1/PC standard.

I honestly was hoping ID Tech would be utilized by every development studio Zenimax owns when they bought up ID, similar to how EA uses Frostbite. Pretty disappointed it isn't used in more games, ID Tech is great.

That's a good question. The engine scales really well to whatever hardware is using it. It also produces good graphics.

I'd like to see them reboot Heretic or Hexen like they did with Doom and Wolfenstein.

DOOM is not a demanding game and the Switch still runs the game at 30fps. That just shows how pathetic the Switch hardware is. iD Tech 6 can not do miracles.

the whole licensing engines thing has kind of scaled back this gen. last year it was huge business (with epic raking it in in particular) but now it makes more sense for big publishers in particular to have their own in house tech.

so i dont see the likes of EA, activision and ubisoft using IDtech 6. indies and AA developers could certainly use it but i dont think the money is there to make it worth IDs time. its also quite a competitive area as is with unreal, unity and so on.

i think zenimax are trying to get all in house devs to use it but its having teething issues as i understand it. ID themselves used it to great effect in doom. but i think dishonoured 2 and the new colossus had some issues. so there may still be a big chunk of work ahead for the engine to work well with games like an elder scrolls say.

Id tech 6 should indeed be used by waaay more games. What if they used it for the next Elder Scrolls. O.O

@johndmgs: That would be awesome. Check out the upcoming Witchfire if you haven't.

Having a in house engine that provides cutting edge graphic and great performance is the best marketing tool you can have and by licensing out the engine you over saturate the market which potentially could reduce sales in your own games.

That being said where is Wolfenstein for the Switch?... They are probably creating a new level of graphical settings for the game to get it to run like Doom. Good luck to them Wolfensteins 2 is more demanding that Doom and that thing runs at 540p in hand held mode at settings that are lower than anything possible on the PC version.

probably because all the big AAA devs are making their own engines so they don't have to license what they don't have to

I mean, seemed like everyone used Unreal Engine last gen, now not so much, even though they're practically giving it away for free (on a condition of a royalty split, which is probably why people still aren't using it)

its not a good idea to force it on developers, the cost of switching engines can be pretty significant especially if there are tons of customization to facilitate a particular game type.

Mass Effect Andromeda is a pretty good example of what happens when an engine is forcefully switched. Not saying they can't switch but they have to be prepared to do a lot of work, and that sometimes means just its still more cost effective and sensible to build on top of what you already have.

@waahahah: That is very true. Forcing a new engine on developers can definitely make it more difficult for them to put their ideas into play and overall optimization of the product plus the cost factors.

Would be cool if they gave the toolset to the developers and let them alter aspects of the engine itself to fall more in line for what they want to achieve.

toolset? Internal developers get all the source code. But again take Andromeda as a good example of why its bad to force developers to use it. Bioware had a lot of custom software for animations that didn't just magically work on frostbite... then look at the facial animations in Mass Effect Andromeda...

I would like that. One of the things i hate about Bethebugs is how unpolished their engine is. It's just trash.

it's a good question and one that i have thought about a lot. That said, it's great for Bethesda to have that egde. I'm sure another doom is getting built off of it. Wish the Evil Within ran off it....maybe the next?

and that's because frostbite was forced on them when they likely didn't have a lot of tooling ported to it that supported their workflow, or many people that had in depth knowledge of it. Seeing as they are owned by EA and so isn't the frostbite engine, I HIGHLY doubt they were restricted in any way other than restricted with time and using what they had already built.

The problem with last gen was majority of games used unreal engine 3. literally every AAA game is using that engine.

nowadays every developer have thier own engine to use.

Id tech 6 will be use in Doom 2.

ID engine is great. That shit runs every game at like 200 fps ultra settings. Doesn't look as good as some other engines, but it runs smooth as butter.

You people think just because you have good performing engine that could produce good graphics is enough to make it available to third parties. No one has seen the ID Tech 6 and we know nothing about its tools. To license out the engine you have to meet certain criteria in order to be considered by other developers like tools, user friendly or other features and also dedicate enough resources to support and license the engines to other third parties which Bethesda or ID software may not have currently. We already have an example of Cryengine in front of us it produced good and competent product when Crytek developed on it but lately it has accumulated a reputation of bad engine because other devs couldn't work with it.

Another example of Naughty Dog's engine. UC4 is a great looking and performing game but I can gurantee no developer (at least indie) will consider that engine even if developing exclusively for PS4 since Naughty Dog only uses their engine to script AI and path finding and other such things. It doesn't even have a level editor. They use Maya to do all their level and all kinds of modeling.