Officials from Japanese publisher and developer Capcom have announced that the company has chosen to license Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 middleware solution for a second time, for a new unnamed title.
The game is developed by a European team, also unnamed, who are said to already be familiar with the technology. The move follows the licensing of Unreal Engine 3 for use in the forthcoming title
Dark Void by Seattle based developer Airtight Games.
Capcom have made increasing use of third party Western developers in recent years, including for updates of prominent Japanese originated properties such as
Commando,
1942 and
Bionic Commando. But although the use of middleware is commonplace in the West it is still relatively rare with Japanese developers.
“Unreal Engine 3 is a perfect fit for this project being developed in Europe, and is capable of ensuring a high-quality game experience. Not only does the development team have thorough knowledge of Unreal Engine 3, the general versatility of Unreal Engine 3 will fully meet the requirements particular to this project", said Keiji Inafune, managing corporate officer at Capcom’s R&D management group.
"Unreal Engine 3 comes with a wide variety of functions required for next-generation game development, and it provides ease of use. On top of that, one of the major advantages is the well-established support system,” he added. “We are delighted to enter into this license agreement, and have strong backup by Epic Games. With Unreal Engine 3, we can expect high development efficiency as well as high creativity within the development team."
