Square Enix has teased its new Luminous Studio engine, which they intends to use to power its next generation of games that should be on the next PlayStation and Xbox.
Japanese technology Writer Zenji Nishikawa was given a sneak peek at the engine, and published his discoveries on Japanese website Impress Watch and Andriasang is kind enough to translate it.
Luminous Studio is said to be similar to Epic’s Unreal Engine, which powered countless games, including Gears of War 3 and Batman: Arkham City.
The game engine is a Square Enix Japan project, but the developers traveled to western Square Enix-owned studios, such as Hitman franchise creator IO Interactive and Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s Eidos Montreal to check out other technologies.
Source code of the next gen engine is being shared with IO’s Glacier 2 Engine and Crystal Dynamics’ CDC Engine.
Despite it looks to be compatible with PS4 and Xbox 720, Luminous Studio also can be used with PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360. The developers are working with Wii and Nintendo 3DS to try to make it compatible with those gaming platforms, too.
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It’s also being made DirectX 11 ready in readying of the transition to the next generation of consoles. Crysis 2 developer Crytek UK told a top European gaming website last month that video game graphics achieved using the DirectX 11 qualiy delivers a solid indication of the visual power of the next Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation.
The team behind Luminous Studio thinks high quality lighting, shading and modelling will be general stuff in the coming generations of games, and having unnatural animation will stand out. Another thing to look out is artificial intelligence.
At current time, there is no plan to license Luminous Engine for external use, but it will also be used by external studios who work on Square Enix projects. Square Enix expects to show the technology demo in late 2012 or 2013.
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