Bandai Namco have been busy lately having recently announced that they have been developing a new in-house engine, with the development being led by Julien Merceron. Merceron has previously worked on Konami’s Fox Engine as well as various other game engines.
The company is said to be developing an “engine designed to withstand the development of large-scale games such as the open world.” Which is incredibly exciting. Katsusuke Horiuchi, a member of the core technology unit, has revealed that the reason for an in-house engine is “We want to continue to have the technological capabilities to create a solid foundation by ourselves, rather than leaving the base to game engines made by other companies.”
I think the development was decided around 2018. First of all, it was a policy to prepare only the runtime in the form of a game framework, and develop tools when there is room. So I was allowed to run for it. However, at that time, it coincided with the development of other large games, and the development was at a slow pace. After that, the concept of the game engine was verified by several people, and based on this prototyping, full-scale development began around 2019.
Horiuchi-san
It’s also mentioned that as of now, there are no titles currently in development for the new engine and that development may start “in about a year”. Bandai Namco are currently looking for new talent to help in creating this new engine. I’m sure I wont be the only person excited to see what this new engine brings.
