The Evolving European Video Game Software Ecosystem - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 209

Table 11.3 Most Common Commercial Core Game Engines

Company Name Product Name Country, founding year

Crytek GmbH CryENGINE Germany, 1999

Digital Extremes Evolution Engine U.S., 1993

Emergent Game
Technologies

Gamebryo U.S., 2002

Epic Games Unreal Engine U.S., 1991

Garage Games Torque U.S., 2000

Id Software idTech U.S., 1991

Terminal Reality Infernal Engine U.S., 1994

Trinigy Vision Germany

Unity Technologies Unity U.S.

Valve Corporation Source Engine U.S., 1996

Vicious Cycle Software Vicious Engine U.S., 2000

Source: Elaboration on the list provided by DeLoura (2009a).

middleware modules, with another fourteen from Canada. Europe was not
far behind, with eighty-four (40 per cent) of modules produced by compa-
nies based in one of the EU member states. Of these products, twenty-two
were developed by companies in the UK, nineteen by companies in France,
twelve in Germany, fi ve in the Netherlands, four in Ireland and four in
Sweden. Twenty-one items, or 10 per cent of the total, come from other
countries. European middleware fi rms succeeded in achieving a dominant
position on one of the major market, South Korea (EGDF 2011).
The dif usion of middleware among studios is shown by a recent survey
(DeLoura 2009a, 2009b) of the top eleven middleware commercial products,
most of which are in the core game engine segment, see Table 11.3. In conclu-
sion, although U.S. companies appear to dominate, Europe supplies a size-
able share of the middleware, including a few of the major game engines.

Distributors and Retailers
The distributing and, in particular, the retailing, part of the value chain is
more locally oriented than other parts of the value chain. We have no real
indication of particular European strengths or weaknesses. Therefore, we
only provide a broad overview based on some other observers' analysis.
This part of the value network includes the activities of manufacturing
boxed products, logistics, retail sales, inventory keeping, point of sale mar-
keting, sales and return agreements (Phillips et al. 2009). The distribu-
tor is the connecting link between the developer/publisher and the retailer.
Responsibilities are mainly in sales agreements as well as in the logistics of