RPGFan's SE Interview

[Aztec Triogal]

RPGFan sat down with SE's president Yoichi Wada recently to discuss a variety of things about SE, their games, and the company's future plans. One thing really stood out though. SE talked about how to cut some of the costs of game development since next generation games take next generation money. A lot, in short. So they're talking about possible online downloads for demo and full game content. I'm all for it. You give me free online Sony and you give me Final Fantasy. Give me online Final Fantasy downloads and I couldn't be happier. You accidentally mistranslate so your character says "I are sick", release a patch to fix it. I'm excited.

The other part of cutting costs was the Unreal Engine they purchased for future games. FFXIII will stick with the White Engine, future games will be on the Unreal Engine. Why oh Aztec, would they purchase the engine now if they weren't going to use it til FInal Fantasy XIV? Well because they've probably already started working on it. (Or maybe FFVII for the PS3) WHo knows?

The full article is here:
http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2007/1063.html

 

[FireZ]

That sounds pretty neat, thanks for the info. What's the difference between the White Engine and the Unreal Engine???

 

[Aztec Triogal]

They're both meant for heavy action and have modest physics engines. The only real difference is that the White Engine was developed by Square and it cost them a lot of money... but apparently couldn't do absolutely everything they wanted to later on in the project. I'm not sure what that means for FFXIII, I just know they said they were more limited than they would've liked.

The Unreal Engine is a similar type of engine that was designed by Epic Games a long time ago but has been continuously updated. So apparently the same action-y feel we're going to be getting in Final Fantasy XIII will continue over to Final Fantasy XIV. A ton of people have bought it and people say it's flooding the market but there is so much unique stuff you can do with it that it's simply not true. An engine does not control the look or feel of the game. It simply controls physics, effects imaging, and that kind of thing. It's also much cheaper than developing your own.

I think SE put a ton of money into developing the White Engine. It wasn't everything they'd hoped for. So instead of spending even more money on FF14, they figured they'd go cheaper and buy something that they new worked. Hopefully people will buy the White Engine as an even cheaper alternative to the Unreal Engine so SE can make some profits off of that.