While we wait for PlatinumGames to make their fourth and final Platinum 4 announcement – and one that is supposedly going to be doozy – there’s still plenty else going on at the studio that’s grabbing headlines. They recently opened up new studio, have ambitions to expand into new genres, and they’re taking steps toward self-publishing as well. And to go hand-in-hand with that expansion, the Japanese developer (and soon to be publisher) is also working on a new in-house game engine.
In a recent update, PlatinumGames announced that they’re working on a new engine that they’re tentatively calling the PlatinumEngine. While Platinum have been using their ow proprietary engine forever, going into next generation and to keep up with growing technology, they decided to move forward and create a new engine from scratch.
“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,” said chief technology officer Wataru Ohmori. “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.”
When asked about why Platinum doesn’t instead choose to work with third party established engines like Unreal or Unity, Ohmori said that those engines don’t necessarily have all the features that Platinum requires to make the kind of games it wants to make, and the studio felt more comfortable working on its own engine to cater to its exact needs.
“We tested out external engines like those, but we found that they were lacking some features that we needed,” said Ohmori. “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.”
There is, of course, no mention of any games that are currently in development at Platinum using the new engine, but given that the engine is still in its development phase, we can probably assume that the likes of Bayonetta 3 and Babylon’s Fall – both of which have been in development for a while – are probably not using this engine. It is, however, possible that the upcoming Project G.G. might be doing so.