Built by the old Konami-owned Kojima Productions with the goal of creating the “best engine in the world, the Fox Engine now seems to have no future at the Japanese company.
Konami recently revealed that Pro Evolution Soccer 2021 will be arriving as a “season update” with the development team focusing their majority efforts on Pro Evolution Soccer 2022, which will be built from the ground up for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The PES team will therefor be using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 for future games in the series.
PES 2013 was the first game to use Fox Engine even though Kojima’s team designed it to be function as more a proprietary engine for Kojima Production’s Metal Gear series. However over the course of its development the engine had outperformed expectations and was touted to have a lot of potential for use in other genre games as well.
The engine went on to feature in subsequent PES and Metal Gear games including the most recent Metal Gear Survive title. P.T, the famed Silent Hills teaser, was also built using the Fox Engine.
With no dedicated team to work on Fox Engine with the engine’s creators Kojima Productions laid off in 2015, it seems the death of the Fox Engine was inevitable. The main reason for Konami not continuing using the Fox Engine was that it would probably need a lot of work to update it for the PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. Engines need to be updated frequently, especially when new consoles are around the corner to make things easier and faster for developers. Konami probably doesn’t have the engineers required to keep maintaining the Fox Engine since their focus has been on their Casinos and Gachapon games in the last few years.
Konami now opting for Unreal Engine 5 should work out well with them as they wouldn’t have to put aside more resources towards their own proprietary engine for future games. This therefor reduces their risk and potential costs so its understandable as a business decision.
What are your thoughts on the Fox Engine’s death? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
