SE first to license Unreal Engine 4

[Jiro]

Epic Games have been hard at work creating its Unreal Engine 4 and Square Enix are the first ones to publicly license it. With the latest technology at its back, Square Enix will be able to realise all of its gaming goals. Or at least, that's what I'm hoping! Perhaps now with the Unreal Engine 4, SE might put Final Fantasy Versus XIII together and release it for us. I'm expecting sexy, sexy characters graphics like we saw in the Agni's Philosophy tech demo.

The aforementioned sexiness.

[Jinx]

What is the Unreal Engine 4, exactly?

[Slothy]

The newest version of the Unreal Engine (obviously. ). You may remember Unreal Engine 3 as the engine that ran such games as Mass Effect, Gears of War, Batman Arkham Asylum/City, Borderlands 1&2, Dishonored, the recent Mortal Kombat reboot, Silent Hill: Downpour, The Last Remnant (just kidding. No one remembers that one), XCOM Enemy Unknown, and god knows how many more. This console generation pretty much ran on that one engine.

[Del Murder]

If Versus goes on Unreal 4 does that mean it won't be for current gen consoles?

[Futan]

If Versus goes on Unreal 4, probably not. But it's probably not going to since they already have had working demos(or was it just gameplay trailers?) of it at gaming conventions. Obviously couldn't do that without an engine to run it. XD But if for whatever reason they're moving it from Crystal Tools to UE4 then we shouldn't expect it anytime soon.

The good news for us gamers who prefer PC is that this should mean that whatever future titles are made with UE4, could be easily portable to PC.

The Last Remnant was made on Unreal Engine. I believe the Mass Effect series also uses it. Arkham Asylum, Borderlands, and America's Army to throw some more out there.

Overall, I didn't find SE's use of it too impressive for TLR. Most obvious flaw being their apparent misuse of mipmaps when loading into an area. But anyways, overall UE, as you can see from some of the titles, is a very versatile engine that can make some great games in the right hands. I'm just excited about the cross-platform possibilities. Hopefully an FF title is made with it.

[Bolivar]

This is an incredibly curious decision, considering all the noise they've made about their in-house, next-gen ready Luminous engine (which Versus is running on). I really want to know what the rationale is.

Vivi's statement, that this generation practically ran on Unreal Engine 3, is in no way an exaggeration. The list of games that have used it is staggering. I do think they're going to have more competition next time around, though, with a slew of "next-gen ready" engines already available, such as Frostbite 2 (already being used at EA), Cry Engine 3, and id Tech 5.

[Futan]

This is an incredibly curious decision, considering all the noise they've made about their in-house, next-gen ready Luminous engine (which Versus is running on). I really want to know what the rationale is.

Vivi's statement, that this generation practically ran on Unreal Engine 3, is in no way an exaggeration. The list of games that have used it is staggering. I do think they're going to have more competition next time around, though, with a slew of "next-gen ready" engines already available, such as Frostbite 2 (already being used at EA), Cry Engine 3, and id Tech 5.

The comment about Versus being run on Luminous made be double-take. "Waitwut. They changed engines?" If they did, and the suspicions that maybe Versus would use UE4 were true, then no doubt Versus would be vaporware. XD Anyways, looked it up and apparently they just added the real-time lighting element of Luminous into Versus. Rendering is still done via Crystal Tools. I honestly don't get why Crystal Tools didn't have real-time lighting. That was "new" in '04.

I don't believe id Tech 5 and Frostbite 2 are being licensed outside their parent companies(ZeniMax and EA). Could be wrong on that though. However, I really hope CryEngine 3 picks up steam with licensing. If only to give Epic some more competition.

One thing I have noticed is a lot of companies are making in-house engines now, and giving them fancy names as almost sort of an advertising method to me and other nerds. :P

[Slothy]

Vivi's statement, that this generation practically ran on Unreal Engine 3, is in no way an exaggeration. The list of games that have used it is staggering. I do think they're going to have more competition next time around, though, with a slew of "next-gen ready" engines already available, such as Frostbite 2 (already being used at EA), Cry Engine 3, and id Tech 5.

I was actually looking at that list when I made my post. There were even more games than I knew about (somehow I actually wasn't aware that XCom ran on UE 3). I wouldn't say they'll necessarily have more competition this time around. Well, I guess they will technically because Frostbite wasn't really around when UE3 was released, but the other two did had previous variants available.

Mind you, most of them weren't very popular for various reasons and have a lot of catching up to do with Unreal in both market penetration, ease of use, etc. I'm not liking id Tech 5's chances though after the tech issues Rage had. Odds are it'll mostly be used internally at Zenimax, and the same might end up being true of Frostbite and EA. Epic's got a really strong lead in the market and what I've seen of the tools in UE4 is pretty impressive.

[Mirage]

Is there actually any sort of confirmation on which engine Vs 13 runs on, or was supposed to run on? Was it confirmed to run on the same luminous engine we were shown in the tech demo? It could also be a stripped down version of it, capable of running on existing consoles.

In the case of UE4, it would probably be the same. Neither UE4 or Luminous is runnable in the high quality we saw in tech demos on current consoles. Both would have to be stripped down to work.

[Futan]

Originally it was supposed to use Crystal Tools for everything, but here's some news from last year saying they are using Luminous' lighting system. Final Fantasy Versus XIII getting help from Luminous Engine, Kingdom Hearts 3DS coming next spring - JoyStiq

Maybe there's more current news saying they're converting the whole thing to it. I don't have the time right now to check though.

[Bolivar]

Frostbite is probably going to stay an EA engine, but part of why I said Epic will face more competition is because EA actually used Unreal Engine for a lot of its games. I also think idTech 5 has a chance because their previous engines were actually used a lot, sometimes in proprietary engines that only credit it if you look deep.

Either way, I just want Square to make more RPGs. If this let it happen faste,r it's fien by me.