According to a new job listing, Bandai Namco seems to be continuing work on their long rumored game engine.
Developing several games per year across its different studios and publishing even more, Bandai Namco was rumored to be working on their own engine when they acquired Kojima Production developed Fox Engine’s lead engineer Julien Merceron back in 2015. Things have been quiet since then, but a new job listing for a Graphics Engineer seems to indicate that Bandai Namco is back at work on the engine.
Currently Bandai Namco uses different engines across different games although they have been favoring Unreal Engine 4 for their recent releases.
Here’s the main job description:
You will be involved in the development and maintenance of the rendering engine, verification and implementation of advanced technologies. Working with artists and programmers from many projects, this is a rewarding job that can help improve the games. We welcome people who are interested in new technologies and have a positive attitude.
The listing further asks for game engine development experience as a desirable quality.
The engine being worked on is probably being developed for the next-generation consoles i.e the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett which is why haven’t seen it yet. The job listing does include development experience for the PS4 and Xbox One, so maybe its a cross-gen engine. However that’s just speculation, but looking at all the hints its safe to say Bandai Namco is prepping up some secret sauce for next gen.
A custom engine would help Bandai Namco create specific tools to better suit the types of games they intend to make, instead of relying on other engine or their developers who might not be able to cater to their specific needs. A game engine is the heart and soul of a game that can greatly influence the development process. Square Enix created a ton of problems for themselves with development of the Luminous engine last gen which affected the development of several games including Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII and the original release of Final Fantasy XIV among others.
Thoughts on Bandai Namco working on their own engine? Let us know in the comments below.
