Platinum Games revealed today some details on the new engine that will be powering up the team's games in the future.

　　Called PlatinumEngine, the new in-house game engine will allow the team to create their games with fewer limitations, as external engines like Unreal Engine and Unity could not provide the required flexibility.

　　We tested out external engines like those, but we found that they were lacking some features that we needed. It’s possible those features could be implemented at some point, but even if so, it would be on a timeframe that’s completely out of our control. When you’re trying to develop highly original titles, that lack of control can be fatal. We decided that developing and improving our own engine is the only way to be sure that we meet our game development teams’ exact needs.

　　Development of the Platinum Games new engine started around two years ago. There are currently six or seven people working on the engine to improve it. The main goal is to take all the unnecessary work from the game development teams.

　　The idea is to take all the unnecessary work away from our game development teams. We’re looking into everything we can do to make their work more efficient, even if those changes seem minor on the surface. Things like reducing the number of button presses needed to convert data, reflecting new work in the build right after it’s converted, or making levels playable directly from the editor. I have experience setting up digital content creation pipelines, so I have a sense of what artists want their workflow to be like.

　　The Platinum Games PlatinumEngine will also allow the team to create better visuals with less effort.

　　My top priority is creating a canvas for rich visuals, with an eye towards recent trends in technology. On top of that, I want to make sure it’s easy for anyone to get good results.

　　For the most part, I’ve worked more closely with game development teams than on system development, and each project has its own needs that have to be met through manual work; they often start to approach the limits of what can be done in terms of time and scale. At the end of the day, I want to give our artists an engine that will let them dig in to a wide variety of visual styles – photorealism, cartoony cell-shading, and beyond – to make sure our games are up to Platinum standards visually.

　　The Platinum Games official website provides some more insights into the new engine and how it will affect the team's games.

　　Platinum Games' next game to release on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is The Wonderful 101: Remastered. The team is also working on Babylon's Fall and Bayonetta 3.