Today PlatinumGames announced a new proprietary games engine that will help developers streamline their workflows on next-gen games.
Now that PlatinumGames is a developer-publisher that owns its IPs, it's time the company create a new future-proofed games engine for the new console generation. The new games engine, dubbed the PlatinumEngine (name not finalized), is being made from scratch. The engine has been in development for the past two years and has many goals, including high res graphics, but it's mostly focused on simplifying development.
"Our goal with this new engine is to reduce, as much as we can, the amount of effort that goes into game development. The idea is to take all the unnecessary work away from our game development teams," said R&D group leader Tsuyoshi Odera.
"We're looking into everything we can do to make their work more efficient, even if those changes seem minor on the surface. Things like reducing the number of button presses needed to convert data, reflecting new work in the build right after it's converted, or making levels playable directly from the editor. I have experience setting up digital content creation pipelines, so I have a sense of what artists want their workflow to be like."
This engine will help PlatinumGames lay the foundations for new games on next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.
It's unlikely that current in-development games like Babylon's Fall, published by Square Enix, and Bayonetta 3, published by Nintendo, will utilize the new PlatinumEngine.
But Hideki Kamiya's new Project GG title--the third hero game after Viewtiful Joe and The Wonderful 101--will probably use it.
PlatinumGames is evolving quite a bit and will soon become a transformative force in the industry. They still have one last reveal as part of their Platinum4 slate.
The four major PlatinumGames announcements so far include:
1. Wonderful 101 re-release on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Switch
2. New self-published IP called Project GG
3. New live services division in Tokyo, Japan focused on online games
4. ?