With Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda now officially complete, the former has got its hands on no shortage of assets, including not just games and franchises and studios, but also any technology developed by any of those studios, including game engines. And of course, one of the most impressive game development engines in use in the industry right now is id Software’s idTech- and Xbox boss Phil Spencer is quite excited about the potential of the engine under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella.
Speaking during the recent Microsoft-Bethesda roundtable, Spencer suggested that id Software could collaborate with fellow shooter developing Xbox first party studios The Coalition and 343 Industries in the future. He said (transcribed by Wccftech): “When you think about id Software’s capability and them collaborating and talking with The Coalition and 343 Industries, and just the first-person/third-person shooter space that we have, the studios that are there, I think it’s just kind of an amazing capability.”
343 Industries has, of course, crafted its own brand new proprietary SlipSpace engine, which has been used to develop Halo Infinite, but The Coalition in particular could really benefit from an in-house first party toolset, seeing as Gears of War continues to stick with Unreal Engine even now.
However, Spencer sees idTech as being more than just an engine for shooters, and suggests that it could be much more widely used within Xbox Game Studios by multiple development teams.
“The other thing that we haven’t really talked about is the future of idTech and what could that mean inside of Xbox,” he said. “Obviously, you know, we’ve got a ton of studios doing a bunch of different work. I love the way Marty Stratton talked about how they’ve collaborated with our Bethesda studios on idTech and I just think about that to the next level. Like, what can we do inside of our organization with idTech, which is one of the world’s best game engines out there, and just make it a tool that so many developers can use to realize their vision.”
Given how impressive idTech is, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Microsoft encouraging its developers to use it more frequently and more widely. Widespread use of internal engines amongst studios is something that we see often at companies – EA likes sticking with Frostbite, Capcom has been bringing more of its franchises over to RE Engine, Ubisoft uses the likes of Anvil Next and Snowdrop – so it’s definitely possible that idTech becomes central to Microsoft’s development approach in the future.
Microsoft and Bethesda discussed several other things during yesterday’s roundtable discussion. In addition to announcing several new additions to Game Pass’ library, they also spoke about exclusivity of future Bethesda games, a Summer event for sharing more news, and more.