Having said that, Bandai Namco Entertainment just confirmed that it’s working on a new in-house gaming engine.
According to Bandai Namco’s Engine Unit Director Katsuki Horiuchi, the publishing giant wants to “continue to have the technological capabilities to create a solid foundation by ourselves.” As we’ve already mentioned, larger companies can afford to eat up the cost of delegating an entire team on a game’s engine as opposed to paying for fully featured and supported engines. Eventually, Bandai’s in-house engine should pay for itself as the company saves money from licensing fees. Bandai Namco can also make money off of the engine by having other studios pay them to use it in their games. The most interesting part here is that Julien Merceron is taking the lead. Merceron has worked for several of the biggest names in the gaming industry over the years. However, the current Worldwide Technology Director for Bandai Namco is perhaps best known for his time with Konami. Specifically, Merceron had a hand in Konami’s Fox Engine. The proprietary in-house engine from Konami was released in 2013 and was used for Metal Gear Solid V. Ultimately, Bandai Namco’s decision to make an in-house gaming engine is good news. The downside here is that it will be a while before we start seeing games for the engine. Because it’s still in development, Bandai Namco probably won’t be making any games using the engine for at least another year. But, the good news here is that, if Bandai Namco’s in-house engine can be a better version of the Fox Engine, the next Souls game should look amazing whenever it comes. Not that Bandai Namco’s current proprietary engine looks bad though. As you can see from the snippets we’ve gotten of Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s upcoming game is looking pretty amazing despite using “old” and repurposes technology. In other news, FromSoftware confirmed last January that Elden Ring had already gone gold back in December. Meanwhile, Hidetaka Miyazaki stated that more players will be able to finish Elden Ring compared to FromSoftware’s previous Souls-like games.
