Epic Games and Square Enix signed a multi-title deal to provide the Japanese publisher’s studios full access to Epic’s cutting-edge graphics technology suites.
Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is an industry standard visual tool that a large number of developers use to create the graphics in their games. Unreal Engine 4 is the next leap in that technology, and now Square Enix is the first outside company to officially sign on to implement the engine into its titles.
“Epic has a strong relationship with Square Enix, and it’s an honor to provide creative and technical talent with the best game technology available for licensing,” territory manager for Epic Games Japan Taka Kawasaki said. “We look forward to supporting their developers with world-class tools for years to come.”
Square Enix’s development studios previously built their own visual-effects technologies. The Final Fantasy team built Crystal Tools to be that company-wide 3D tool in the mid-2000s, but developing something like that is often one of the greatest contributors to game-production cost.
This move could save the company time and money.