In the most recent update on Platinumgames' official website, the team of developers has revealed some very interesting details about their new in-house engine provisionally called PlatinumEngine; an engine that they hope will help them drive all of their upcoming projects.
According to Chief Technology Officer Wataru Ohmori, the engine staff decided to create their own engine to meet the demands of modern games — revealing that they simply wouldn't have been able to keep up had they not come up with this new PlatinumEngine.
"We've used our own in-house engine, specialized for action game development, since PlatinumGames was founded," Ohmori explains.
"But 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. 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."
One would think that developing games using already existing engines would be easier than creating a brand-new engine, but it turns out that this wasn't the case; at least not for PlatinumGames, as they believe that a new engine will give them more control over the development process than other engines could.
"We tested out external engines like those, but we found that they were lacking some features that we needed. 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," Ohmori revealed while also adding that "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."
Ohmori also reveals that this new PlatinumEngine gives developers more freedom to make changes during the development process while also making the whole process easier.
"Our existing engine already puts assets in the hands of each artist to freely control, so it’s easy for programmers to tweak what they need to, too. This is one of PlatinumGames’ strengths as a developer, and with the new engine, we want to give artists and programmers even greater control to try things out with their creations. The idea is for the new engine to both boost efficiency and make it easier to try new challenges in how our games are presented."
By the look of things, it seems that PlatinumGames has made the right decision in order to keep developing games at a proper pace. We still don't have much information about the engine itself, or what exactly is it that it will allow developers to do.
PlatinumGames has yet to show us Bayonetta 3, and it is very likely that it could be the first game to show off this new engine. We'll have to keep waiting and keep our fingers crossed so that the developer finally gives us a proper trailer for the game, or reveal any other titles they may be currently working on.