Final Fantasy XIII to use Unreal Engine 3.0...no more White Engine?

[Brimstone]

In the second part of his interview with the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Square Enix president Youichi Wada shed some more light on his company's next-gen strategy. To deal with rising development costs, Square Enix will utilize universal development tools and middleware. As an example Wada cited the Unreal Engine 3. According to the Square Enix president, Final Fantasy XIII will also be powered by Epic Game's highly popular middleware. Where this leaves the company's propiertary White Engine (which was supposed to be Final Fantasy XIII's game engine) is unknown at this point. Citing successful cost cutting with the help of middleware in the American game industry, Wada believes a similiar approach will become the standard modus operandi in Japan as well. The second way to tackle rising development costs is the e-commerce aspect offered by modern consoles and handhelds. Offering content online would allow for flexible pricing, depending on the amount of data downloaded or the play style. Contrary to the old retail system, where a game only had one chance to become a hit, downloads would give game companies more opportunities to generate profit. Wada also mentioned downloadable demo versions and budget releases as one advantage of online distribution. While the former could help to gauge customer interest in a new product, the latter could target fans, who for instance are only interested in a Final Fantasy game's story, but don't want to play through it. To satisfy these consumers, Wada envisions a scaled-down budget version being distributed online.

Looking ahead, Wada wants to give young developers the chance to gather experience working on ports and remakes for six to twelve months. Afterwards they should move on and apply their newly gathered experience to new games. With these games, Square Enix aims to conquer new markets, such as PlayStation 3.

Accordingly the company is not planning to release a lot of major titles for next-generation platforms during 2007 (Dragon Quest IX apparently being the exception). Instead, Square Enix aims to generate profit by releasing ports, remakes and lower budget titles.

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2007/1063.html


Delete thread please.

This is a mistake. The Japanese interview originally did mention that UE3 would be used for FFXIII as well, but within hours it was removed from the article as it was a mistake and assumption on the editor's part.

 

[Nesh]

Interesting approach. A very good find


First time SE goes for such a strategy

 

[Titanio]

From duckroll on GAF:

This is a mistake. The Japanese interview originally did mention that UE3 would be used for FFXIII as well, but within hours it was removed from the article as it was a mistake and assumption on the editor's part.

Further, there's apparently an editor's apology at the bottom for the confusion. Anyone with Japanese can double-check with the article here:

http://arena.nikkeibp.co.jp/tokushu/gen/20070207/120802/index2.shtml

edit - oops, beaten by OP.

 

[Angelcurio]

Nevermind, titanio beat me to it.

 

[Nesh]

So FF13 is solely using the WE

 

[Brimstone]

So FF13 is solely using the WE

It's up in the air at this point I think.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So FF13 is solely using the WE

We can guess FFXIII and FFXIII Versus do. Furthermore it might be chosen as the engine for PS3 games. The choice of UE3.0 could be for both XB360 titles to save on an engine rewrite, cross-platform titles like an MMO, and smaller titles as mentioned in the article. They may also be integrating UE3 tools with their white engine, so UE3 provides the content creation side - that being one of it's strong points. The render is then a platform-specific engine that doesn't suffer any of the penalties of the multiplatform UE3

 

[TheChefO]

It's up in the air at this point I think.

I wonder if this "misinterpritation" was politically motivated either way.

 

[StefanS]

See OP.