Square Enix Details Its Luminous Studio Engine

Details have emerged regarding Square Enix's upcoming Luminous Studio engine, which the company will be using to power its next generation of titles. As reported by Japanese news website Impress Watch, and as translated by Andriasang, the Luminous Studio engine strives to provide high quality, flexible development processes, and is similar in structure to the likes of the Unreal Engine and Unity engine. The Luminous engine is under development separately from other existing Square Enix-owned engines: the Glacier 2 engine from Hitman developer IO Interactive and the CDC Engine from Tomb Raider house Crystal Dynamics. While Luminous is under separate development in Japan, according to the report, the engine's tech staff is implementing some pre-existing tech from Glacier 2 and the CDC Engine in Luminous. The DirectX 11-ready engine is set to be compatible with PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC hardware, amongst any others which can handle programmable shaders. The team is also looking into making it compatible with the Nintendo Wii and 3DS consoles. However, as of yet Square Enix has no plans to license the engine outside of the company, and it will be used solely for Square Enix projects. The launch of the engine is expected in late 2012 to early 2013. The first game to use the engine has not yet been announced.