If you’ve got $750,000, you can buy yourself a royalty-free version of the Unreal Engine by Epic Games. Or if you want to pay a little less up-front, there are options down to $350,000 plus royalties.

Sure, it’s a fair chunk of change, but it looks like PS3 and Xbox 360 developers are finding it a bargain. After all, they get a whole development platform for that money, which is a lot of work they don’t need to do. They can concentrate on the game itself.

The biggest next-gen game to use the Unreal Engine looks to be Gears of War for the Xbox 360. Joystiq points out that “To an extent, Gears of War is just a tech demo to prove the viability of Unreal Engine 3 for next-gen development. It’ll be an impressive game, no doubt, but perhaps mostly because it needs to be impressive to drive licensing revenues.” I don’t know if the creators of Gears of War would agree.

Joystiq - What’s up with Unreal Engine licensing?