Platinum Games Developing In-House Engine Called PlatinumEngine - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 August 2020 / 2,841 Views
Platinum Games in a new interview with its engine staff announced that it is developing an in-house engine, which is tentatively titled PlatinumEngine.
"We’ve used our own in-house engine, specialized for action game development, since PlatinumGames was founded," said Platinum Games' Wataru Ohmori. "But modern games demand a whole new level of quality, a greater variety and number of objects on-screen, and a richer amount of expressive visual power. We came to the frightening realization that if we don’t make our work more efficient, we’re simply not going to be able to keep making the games that we want to make as technology and expectations grow. Our new engine will help us make bigger, more expressive games than ever before, and with greater ease.
"We tested out external engines like those, but we found that they were lacking some features that we needed. It’s possible those features could be implemented at some point, but even if so, it would be on a timeframe that’s completely out of our control. When you’re trying to develop highly original titles, that lack of control can be fatal. We decided that developing and improving our own engine is the only way to be sure that we meet our game development teams’ exact needs."
Tsuyoshi Odera added, "When people try to sell you on their game engine and what it can do, usually the first thing they do is tout its graphical capabilities. Which makes sense, since that has the most visual impact. But we’re thinking of the engine we’re building as a game engine, through and through. Don’t take that to mean that we aren’t giving graphical performance its due; we just think that there are other elements that are every bit as crucial to making truly engaging, AAA titles, and we want to give them as much emphasis."
"Another major point is that ease of use is a very high priority. With this new engine, prototyping – which is where we try out new ideas for action gameplay, to see how they feel – will be much faster," Ohmori added. "To give an example, programmers at PlatinumGames have more freedom to directly control game animations than they do at most game studios; that gives them a particularly important role in action game development. Our existing engine already puts assets in the hands of each artist to freely control, so it’s easy for programmers to tweak what they need to, too. This is one of PlatinumGames’ strengths as a developer, and with the new engine, we want to give artists and programmers even greater control to try things out with their creations. The idea is for the new engine to both boost efficiency and make it easier to try new challenges in how our games are presented."
thanks Gematsu.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Nice to see them taking a shot at making their own engine. Far too many devs using one engine or another these days, so it's good that we're seeing more attempts at others trying to make their own.
Platinum do specialise in action games so developing their own engine makes sense.
Well that will add some initial cost, but if they want to be unique yes their engine is needed for that.
It seems to me that devs would generally be better off working with established engines. Yes, they have to pay for them. But, there are many people around that know how to work with the popular engines, tland they mostly have their kinks worked out. Making a new engine just adds like 2-3 more layers of complexity to the making of a game.
I wonder if this is the final Platinum 4 announcement
Well the name isnt exactly orginial but than again its their name so I guess its okay.
