Square Enix Isn't Sharing its Fancy New Engine

[Sylveria]

I don't understand, it looks gorgeous, but it's nothing we haven't seen in CGI's before...

Yes. But that isn't a CGI. It's real-time footage.

Allegedly. Square Enix does have a certain history of showing pre-rendered cinemas and saying it's actual game footage when it isn't

 

[weirdee]

My response: Meh. Companies make single use engines all the fucking time for games and in-house engines on a regular basis. A comapny isn't required to license its property or even so much as give enough of a damn to say they aren't licensing it. They can do what they want, they did, end of line.

Also, LOL at people finding a way to get angry over this. The programming department and the story writing department are separate groups stop conflating their resources. A company is free to make any decision it wants with its property even if it might not be financially the best (or do you want every developer to be forced to put in DRM since its a more 'profitable' way of doing things).

They're free to do whatever they want.

We're free to complain about things like the final fantasy movie that everybody wants to forget.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Now, if you'll forgive me just one moment of cynicism and bitterness; I can't help wonder if Square Enix's might want to hold off on splurging on the super realistic sweat technology and instead invest in some writers.

That would imply that they know the writing in their games sucks, and they clearly do not, or they do and don't care, sides Square has for a long time now been all about style over substance, asking them to change now is pretty pointless, best thing to do is just walk away and let them die

Though, not licensing this thing out seems rather silly, they afraid of making more money or something?

catchpa: power dressing

o.0 what, the flying fucking hell, is power dressing?

 

[Vivi22]

I can't help but feel that it's a mistake not licensing this engine. Epic makes stupid amounts of money from licensing Unreal. It could be something that would produce steady income for the company, which from what I understand, they could use. By not licensing the engine they are spending lots of money to make a games with it and hoping they sell well. You need to cover the cost of making the game and the cost of making the engine. And with Squarenix's development times they run the risk of only using it for a few games before it's obsolete. But, meh. It's there money to waste doing it.

I agree that it might be a mistake for them not to license the engine, but something else to keep in mind is that licensing an engine isn't as simple as making it then having people pay to use it. You have to support the engine as well which means constant work updating it, optimizing it, streamlining work flow, and supporting your customers who are licensing it when they have technical problems. And obviously those technical problems may get a little more involved than the sort your average PC owner encounters with the software they use.

It's no small undertaking to try and make a go at licensing your engine. They'd probably have to employ and train an entire new division to do it, and that's kind of risky, especially when Epic has such a lock on the engine market right now, and while this engine is looking good, it doesn't look to be doing anything totally ground breaking on either the consumer end for the final game, or on the developers end with the development pipeline. I was just as, if not more impressed by the demos I saw of UE4 as with the luminous Engine stuff in that regard. It's just not the sort of thing that looks like it has a niche it can fill, and competing in the ever shrinking AAA market is only going to get more difficult instead of less if the next consoles go for raw power at all costs again. Maybe they could try and find that niche in the Japanese market, but they're backing away from AAA development even more so than the West it seems.

It also needs to be remembered that while Square has certainly been struggling, games are still their primary business. If they decided to try and license this, they'd be competing with Epic which not only has much of the market already, but which is basically a company that licenses it's tech first and makes games second. Engines are their business, and it would be a big uphill climb. I'm not sure Square could afford to chance it right now even if they wanted to.

 

[Gennadios]

Now, if you'll forgive me just one moment of cynicism and bitterness; I can't help wonder if Square Enix's might want to hold off on splurging on the super realistic sweat technology and instead invest in some writers.

This statement can apply to the majority of AAA development houses. SE at least throws enough whimsy and fantastical wtf elements to drown out the crappy writing, which can't be said for other developers, no reason to pick on them.

 

[shintakie10]

I don't understand, it looks gorgeous, but it's nothing we haven't seen in CGI's before...

Yes. But that isn't a CGI. It's real-time footage.

Allegedly. Square Enix does have a certain history of showing pre-rendered cinemas and saying it's actual game footage when it isn't

Allegedly nothin. That was real-time footage. They proved it was real time footage when they demoed it.

The same was done for UE4 when it was demoed. I am not sure if the Crytek demo was real time.

 

[oldtaku]

Oh come on. If they don't license the engine who's going to make good games with it?


Edit: less snarkily, licensing out an engine is a /huge/ resource drain. The level of support needed is gigantic. That's the reason id stopped licensing theirs.

 

[FFP2]

I don't know what's with calling Squeenix names over this. They don't want to compete with Crytek or Epic, let them use their engine for in-house stuff like a shitload of other studios do.

I meant stuff like tesselation doesn't matter, I don't really notice things like that. Crytek seems to focus on being hyper-realistic which doesn't really require much imagination. Just Youtube the final level of ff13, purple high speed platform shit was popping off from all sides.

There's a distinction people around here like to make between "graphics" and "visuals" (or aesthetics), with graphics referring to the technical side of things. To say the engine will blow Cryengine 3 out of the water graphically is pretty much outright wrong.

And just for the sake of curiosity, what do you game on? And if it's a PC, I'm interested in the rough specs of that and the monitor.

I meant SE will beat them in asthetics. Definitely not in pure graphic tech, Crytek and the Metro devs take that prize.

I play PC games on a laptop... with an Intel HD 3000... and most games work on medium at around 25 fps...

I'ma see myself out now...

 

[FFP2]

I seriously doubt Square will beat Crytek in the graphics department but they will probably beat them in the games department. Both have some of the best artists in the industry and so it will all come down to what kind of games you enjoy more. Some of the Cryengine 3 features already look on par with some of the stuff on the Luminous Engine without even needing the same amount of power that their engine will require. The advanced tessellation and volume/lighting effects that are in Crysis 3 already look just as good as some of the stuff in the Luminous Demo. Lets not forget that we have yet to even see real in game footage of this engine in action so who knows what they will have to sacrifice in order to make it run in real time.

I meant stuff like tesselation doesn't matter, I don't really notice things like that. Crytek seems to focus on being hyper-realistic which doesn't really require much imagination. Just Youtube the final level of ff13, purple high speed platform shit was popping off from all sides.

Are we talking about graphics or personal taste in games because I really don't see how a game like Final Fantasy takes more "imagination" then realistic games. Final Fantasy is like a painting, there is absolutely no environment interactivity whatsoever in these games and require about as much engineering as a square house. I would argue its even harder to make a more realistic game because you have to create realistic AI, physics and graphics to match our expectation of what we see everyday. Its much easier making objects and creatures that don't exist in real life, because there is no reference whatsoever to judge it with so they can do whatever they want with it and not be held to any set standard.[/quote]

The "realistic" devs can just go outside and take reference photo, then try to make the game look exactly like that; the "unrealistic" devs' only limit is the sky(so cheesy!). Realistic games are harder to make, unrealistic games are harder to even conceptulize.

Keyword is "imagination".

so Square-Enix has two graphics engine? Luminous Engine and Unreal 4.0??

And the Crystal Engine they made FF13 and its malformed, bastard off-spring with.

Luminous is the new version of the Crystal Engine...

 

[XMark]

I'll bet it's a lot of extra work to prepare an engine for use by other developers. You have to make things general when you were only making them for a specific purpose for your game. You need all sorts of extra documentation and need to provide support, and so on. There's extra money in it, but lots of extra work.

EDIT: lol my captcha was "cloud nine". Somewhat appropriate.

 

[Baresark]

I can't help but feel that it's a mistake not licensing this engine. Epic makes stupid amounts of money from licensing Unreal. It could be something that would produce steady income for the company, which from what I understand, they could use. By not licensing the engine they are spending lots of money to make a games with it and hoping they sell well. You need to cover the cost of making the game and the cost of making the engine. And with Squarenix's development times they run the risk of only using it for a few games before it's obsolete. But, meh. It's there money to waste doing it.

I agree that it might be a mistake for them not to license the engine, but something else to keep in mind is that licensing an engine isn't as simple as making it then having people pay to use it. You have to support the engine as well which means constant work updating it, optimizing it, streamlining work flow, and supporting your customers who are licensing it when they have technical problems. And obviously those technical problems may get a little more involved than the sort your average PC owner encounters with the software they use.

It's no small undertaking to try and make a go at licensing your engine. They'd probably have to employ and train an entire new division to do it, and that's kind of risky, especially when Epic has such a lock on the engine market right now, and while this engine is looking good, it doesn't look to be doing anything totally ground breaking on either the consumer end for the final game, or on the developers end with the development pipeline. I was just as, if not more impressed by the demos I saw of UE4 as with the luminous Engine stuff in that regard. It's just not the sort of thing that looks like it has a niche it can fill, and competing in the ever shrinking AAA market is only going to get more difficult instead of less if the next consoles go for raw power at all costs again. Maybe they could try and find that niche in the Japanese market, but they're backing away from AAA development even more so than the West it seems.

It also needs to be remembered that while Square has certainly been struggling, games are still their primary business. If they decided to try and license this, they'd be competing with Epic which not only has much of the market already, but which is basically a company that licenses it's tech first and makes games second. Engines are their business, and it would be a big uphill climb. I'm not sure Square could afford to chance it right now even if they wanted to.

That is true, I had not considered maintenance. Good call, my friend. I stand corrected.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

This makes me happy I got a 680 in my machine.

Also, doesn't Square publish a ton of games? With lots of development teams. So a lack of writing talent at Squares in house dev team won't hamper these games too much.

I'm just worried this will encourage devs to pin the focus on making their games simply look pretty, but we know that's not a good idea don't we Warfighter?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, if Squeenix wants to be colossally stupid, that's their decision.
Recoup the costs of developing our latest eye-candy? Naaaawww. That business is fo' suckas!

Because we all know that nobody EVER makes money developing and licensing game engines..

I have nothing against a company keeping their in-house tech to themselves, but Squeenix has made a TERRIBLE habit out of developing engines in-house and then under-utilizing them.
Which is very VERY costly, in both time and money.

Like how it happened to Final Fantasy 12.
The FF12 game engine spent over half a decade in development and near RE-development because the rest of the gaming world overtook them. Good thing the PS2 had much better longevity than initially thought possible, or FF12 could have been a disaster.

 

[KingdomFantasyXIII]

Well, if Squeenix wants to be colossally stupid, that's their decision.
Recoup the costs of developing our latest eye-candy? Naaaawww. That business is fo' suckas!

Because we all know that nobody EVER makes money developing and licensing game engines..

I have nothing against a company keeping their in-house tech to themselves, but Squeenix has made a TERRIBLE habit out of developing engines in-house and then under-utilizing them.
Which is very VERY costly, in both time and money.

Like how it happened to Final Fantasy 12.
The FF12 game engine spent over half a decade in development and near RE-development because the rest of the gaming world overtook them. Good thing the PS2 had much better longevity than initially thought possible, or FF12 could have been a disaster.

Well, Square might be reutilizing both the Crystal engine and the Luminous Engine with Versus XIII. Maybe now the graphics engines will be utilized more because of how many new engines have been made as of now. They seemed to want to recycle the crystal engine and make sequels to XIII (not because of costs because the goal for FF13's sales were 5 million and it sold 5.5 million by the end of their fiscal year).

The Luminous Engine took a year to make, 6 months to plan and 6 months to develop. I don't think it would be that expensive.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, Square might be reutilizing both the Crystal engine and the Luminous Engine with Versus XIII. Maybe now the graphics engines will be utilized more because of how many new engines have been made as of now. They seemed to want to recycle the crystal engine and make sequels to XIII (not because of costs because the goal for FF13's sales were 5 million and it sold 5.5 million by the end of their fiscal year).

The Luminous Engine took a year to make, 6 months to plan and 6 months to develop. I don't think it would be that expensive.

If the Luminous Engine is just an upgrade to the Crystal Engine (as others have stated), that would explain the lowered costs and incentive to use it.

Ever since ATB, Square has been clingy about its inhouse tech.

 

[Agayek]

I am forcibly reminded of this:

http://www.southpark.nl/clips/152804/cartmanland-commercial

And really, any comparison that ends up with you being like Eric Cartman means you're doing something wrong.