I mean, the RPG Maker engine does way more than people give it credit for, and takes care of a lot of the mundane data management that usually gets underestimated when people decide to make RPGs from scratch. Event-scripting especially is where a lot of award-winning AAA games look amateurish in comparison. Sure, plenty of people are content to make a quick buck churning out endless waves of dubiously-priced shovelware, made easier by the accessibility of modern game markets to indie devs, but that doesn't mean the tool itself isn't capable of a whole lot more.
Angels of Death was a free game made with VX and got a TV anime. Ao Oni, a series of free games made with XP, got TV shorts and two live-action movies (and I could probably point you to the exact face maker tool it originally used if I still had my old bookmarks). Even a relative behemoth like Corpse Party started out on one of the older RMs. Amusingly, none of these are actually RPGs, but I think it proves my point about the engine pretty well.
Personally, graphics coding is my comfort zone, so if I can have access to Unity's engine and still offload all the menial stuff to the RPG Maker core, that's a win. I doubt this will completely change the Unity ecosystem, or reduce the amount of shovelware, but I like to think we could get some good stuff out of it.
This delay is... not a surprise at all, though. We've basically run out of 2022 at this point, and there haven't been very many updates to the official site. (I last checked... yesterday, as it happens. Funny how that works.)
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