It's not that I think that UE5 is good for low end hardware, it's not.
One of the reasons that a lot of studios struggle with bad performance on UE5, is because a lot of studios, fired their most experienced devs and hired bunch of cheaper new programmers, because they bought into the whole make game with blueprints idea.
I have several friends (I know just one datapoint ), that were in games industry from 6 to 12 years that got fired, just for the studio to replace them with cheaper more inexperienced devs.
Baicly UE5 overpromised how easy it was. You still get some great working games that use UE5, but this are from studios that have experienced devs.
It’s not terrible at low-end hardware. Fortnite has been able to run on phones for a long time now. It’s not as lightweight as Unity or Godot by any means and they still remain the optimal choice for low-end platforms.
What you can’t do is hit compile out of the box and expect it to work well on those low-end platforms, because it will try to use all the high-end features if it thinks it’s allowed to.
I don’t think it exactly overpromises how easy it is, but unlike a lot of software it has a learning curve that seems gentle at first and then exponentially increases. It’s high-end AAA-grade development software aimed at professionals, it expects you to know what you’re doing.
One of the reasons that a lot of studios struggle with bad performance on UE5, is because a lot of studios, fired their most experienced devs and hired bunch of cheaper new programmers, because they bought into the whole make game with blueprints idea. I have several friends (I know just one datapoint ), that were in games industry from 6 to 12 years that got fired, just for the studio to replace them with cheaper more inexperienced devs.
Baicly UE5 overpromised how easy it was. You still get some great working games that use UE5, but this are from studios that have experienced devs.