Game engine enthusiasts, take note: After roughly two years of beta testing, Japanese game and tech company Silicon Studios Corporation has announced plans to release its open-source C# game engine Xenko this April.
This is mostly notable if you're interested in Xenko itself, and you can figure that out by downloading the free beta version that's currently available via the Xenko website. You can also poke around in the source code over on Xenko's GitHub page.
While Silicon Studios is probably best known now for developing the Bravely Default 3DS games, it has a long history as a middleware developer. However, this is the first time the company will be releasing a commercial game engine -- on that's meant to be used to make games for mobile, PC, console, and VR platforms.
"The decision to move from middleware to a full game engine was actually a fairly easy one for us,” company chief Terada Takehiko stated in a press release. "We were in a position to address some of the complaints developers have about the other commercial game engines on the market, and from there we began to see what developers of the future will need to be successful, including VR and mobile support.”
When the engine is formally released Silicon Studios expects to charge for it, though it has not yet released any pricing details. Of course, GDC is next week, so expect the company to be demoing it there and sharing more details during the show.