Middleware Update: Terminal Reality Touts Infernal Engine Projects

Ghostbusters developer Terminal Reality announced today that "more than a dozen licensees with 20+ games currently in development" are using its Infernal Engine. The press release cites three studios recently signed on to use the middleware in addition to its existing clients.

Zen Technologies and Trine Games (no relation to the recently released PC/PSN platformer) of India, as well as A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Games (no relation to S.T.A.L.K.E.R., F.E.A.R., R.U.S.E., or any other stupidly titled games) have all come forward with kind words for Infernal Engine (no relation to the terrible Eidos-published FPS from 2007). We'll forgive you if you haven't heard of these studios.

It's always good to see more competition in the middleware market, but neither Infernal nor Crytek's CryEngine are quite ready for comparisons with Epic's monolithic Unreal Engine 3. To put it into perspective, Unreal Engine 3 is used in over 80 announced titles since 2006.

What do you think? Would you prefer games to use one technology or the other? Can you tell the difference between various middleware engines?