Just my 2cents on the UE5 argument. I work with Unreal engine, it's been 2 years by now, and I always keep up with the upgrades of the engine. I stopped using UE4 month and months ago as soon as UE51 got released and I'm currently working on UE5.3 already, which is still in a Preview version not even Early Access or Beta, and trying to put this down simple here is why:
the amount of changes in approach and features is so deep by now that not only UE4 gets no support from Unreal and I'd say the lack of real support even for the UE5 current 3 versions ─ 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 Preview1 ─ that becomes though and would become ever harder and harder for us developers considering Epic is already working on the UE5.4.
That above alone is the reason why moving to UE5 is a must have right now and whoever is developing a game today still using UE4 is basically killing the own game project on the long run because will always become harder for them to get back on track with the upgrades.
Now, here is the thing... I'm using the 5.3 version now and I can tell I thank any god I don't believe into for having done so because UE5.1 despite the performance stability with very rare crashes on the editing/developing, which takes far more resources from a PC compared to the playable executable you guys play with, mostly due to my back then weaker laptop because UE5.2 is actually almost literally an unreal pain in the ass and for the workflow because of sudden crashes out of nowhere even only when launching the editor and those crashes still happened despite my upgrade of RAM from 16GB to 32GB.
Unreal Engine 5.3 instead runs like a charm despite being a Preview release... it's faster, reliable, crashed so far only when I had too many applications devouring my laptop resources.
Just to explain the difference... compared to 5.1 while in terms of CPU both UE5.2 and UE5.3 have a very lower impact unless shaders compiling or rebuilding the lighting, in terms of GPU both take a 55% out of my total RAM and that explains why i had those crashes just at launch with the 5.2 and zero crashes with 5.3.
In conclusion... unless Epic screws the 5.3 up, in the meanwhile, with the official release I find the UE5.3 impressively good, far beyond my own expectations, so I would like to reassure most of the guys an the other players ─ female gamers, just come out of the shadow... we know you'e there either playing horny and naughty! ─ out there.
When the games developed out there in UE5 will finally be developed faster you will profit from playing. of course I believe an RTX and a 32GB is gonna be mandatory by now but if I could spend those 80€ for a RAM improvement ─ I assure you, it's been a very tough investment! ─ it shouldn't be a big deal. Of course if your graphics card is not at least a GTX 1070 with 8GB VRAM you gonna struggle and eventually not being able to play some games at all.
I'm not sure which engine are using for developing Carnal Instinct, or WildLife which has been another game now developed in UE5 that gave huge troubles with crashing at launch before the RAM upgrade, but if they are using UE5.2 like I suspect then I foresee huge problems coming for most gamers and i can see why I had Carnal Instinct already crashing at launch with some creepy message about missing textures and other stuff right before writing this comment.
Unfortunately in terms of developing a game today getting stuck with UE4 is a suicide for any developer who really wants to develop a game that's not already a too old game they most likely will do abandon along the way, plain and simple put.
Sad but true.