Falcom developing their own engine.

Deleted member 12790 · Dec 18, 2019

The reasons one would want to create their own engine likely won't be understood by many ITT as it goes deep into how "objects" are defined in memory and requires a study in programming access patterns. Just understand that UE4 does certain things one way, when there are entirely valid reasons to do things another way. It's a very in the weeds topic that, no disrespect, many on this board won't get.

Particularly for things like RPGs, going with alternative programming patterns is a very valid reason for rolling your own engine, as RPGs can have enormously complex microkernels embedded into them.

Open Wound · Dec 18, 2019

I barely know a single thing about engines, but I trust Falcom to make the safest, least risky choice with this, after all, that seems to be their modus operandi.

Warukyure · Dec 18, 2019

From what has been said in the past, Sony's PhyreEngine is free to use and is pretty much covered by the royalties paid game sales. A lot of JRPGs were made using Phyre, even square-enix's world of final fantasy.
It is literally the "free-est" engine out there and they want to make their own? Heck they have a semi-custom one for the most recent Ys don't they? And didn't that have performance issues?

jett · Dec 18, 2019

Falcom has an old-ass Japanese video game company mentality. It's like they're perpetually stuck in the past.

Just license a game engine ffs. Maybe your games will stop looking (and running) like garbage.

Deleted member 12790 · Dec 18, 2019

jett said:
Just license a game engine ffs. Maybe your games will stop looking (and running) like garbage.

engine != renderer

Even when rolling your own engine, there are modular renderers you can implement freely.

Example:

a terrific low-dependency modular renderer written entirely in C89

Sumio Mondo · Dec 18, 2019

Wouldn't they be better off going the middleware route rather than build one from scratch? Do they ever use Unreal or Unity? They been using the same ancient engine from last gen all this time?

Valcrist · Dec 18, 2019

Just a reminder that the engine creation will be done on the side and doesn't seem to affect their upcoming games at all. They're also not exactly strangers to making their own engine.

SolidSnakex · Dec 18, 2019

Andri said:
Nice to bring your console wars shit into this.
Fact is Switch is the market leader in Japan, and Falcoms biggest market is Japan.
They might be doing good now, but that wont hold on if they waste money on engines and only target platforms that are on the way out or will have a very slow adoption rate.

The thing to remember is that while the Switch is doing better than the PS4 in Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that all audiences are on the platform. A great example of that was the PS3 and Wii during that era. The Wii outsold the PS3 with ease there. Despite that you had something like Tales of Graces f selling more in its first week than Graces on the Wii sold in its first year.

Deleted member 21709 · Dec 18, 2019

Andri said:
Nice to bring your console wars shit into this.
Fact is Switch is the market leader in Japan, and Falcoms biggest market is Japan.
They might be doing good now, but that wont hold on if they waste money on engines and only target platforms that are on the way out or will have a very slow adoption rate.

Nice to bring your console wars shit into this

Oreiller · Dec 18, 2019

Their games already run poorly so it doesn't bode well.

Thuddert · Dec 18, 2019

DarknessTear said:
Just a reminder that the engine creation will be done on the side and doesn't seem to affect their upcoming games at all. They're also not exactly strangers to making their own engine.

Not sure if it's really a side thing. Like yeah the games announced aren't gonna be running on it, but it's gonna be tied with a new kiseki or ys game. The landscape will also look different so they have new game + new platforms + new engine to juggle. It's kinda begging for development problems.

Maybe if they easied up on game releases, but they wanna strike while the iron is hot so now they have three games slated for next year already... phew

MatrixMan.exe · Dec 18, 2019

Wing Scarab said:
Not really. In the long run its not really good for a small studio. You have to pay Epic royalties at 5% before taxes for each game that is developed using the engine. After awhile that really start to eat into your profits. Epic make deals with big companies like Ubisoft, MS, EA and Activision where they get special deals and those fees are waived.

I'm not talking about Epic specifically as I know the nonsense that comes with licensing out their engine as we use it as well.

There's obviously benefits to creating your own proprietary, but I question what that's going to let them do vs. what they already use, and will those benefits outweigh the time and cost of making R&D on your own engine.

The issue right now is that we just don't know where Falcom wants to take their games next. If they plan to go bigger in production values then a new engine does make sense.

CaviarMeths · Dec 18, 2019

SolidSnakex said:
The thing to remember is that while the Switch is doing better than the PS4 in Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that all audiences are on the platform. A great example of that was the PS3 and Wii during that era. The Wii outsold the PS3 with ease there. Despite that you had something like Tales of Graces f selling more in its first week than Graces on the Wii sold in its first year.

Not to take away from your overall point here, but Wii barely outsold PS3 in Japan, and the Wii version of Graces was mired in technical problems and was a generally garbage product.

But yes, the Tales audience is mostly in the PS ecosystem in Japan, as is the Falcom audience. In both cases, it's due to a long history of fostering those audiences within those ecosystems.

GamingCJ · Dec 18, 2019

Andri said:
Nice to bring your console wars shit into this.
Fact is Switch is the market leader in Japan, and Falcoms biggest market is Japan.
They might be doing good now, but that wont hold on if they waste money on engines and only target platforms that are on the way out or will have a very slow adoption rate.

Oh come on, it's posts like yours that often turn Falcom threads into port begging and 'they are doomed' messes, despite every Financial Report indicating otherwise.
PS4 + PS5 will soon share the same library, additionally Falcom earns >50% of their revenue from licensing.

If you start your posts with 'Falcom wants to die' bullshit then don't complain about an annoyed reaction.

Ravage · Dec 18, 2019

From their recent interview with Eurogamer

Why they didn't go with UE
"We've actually had Epic come in the past to give us a walkthrough of Unreal," says Kondo. "I don't want to say bad things about any company's engine, but when you're using a different engine, and problems arise, it's often difficult to figure out if this a problem on our side or with the engine. That could take a lot of time and energy."

Impetus to make a new engine
"To give a very specific example in Trails of Cold Steel 3, there's a part where 40 different character models are on screen at the same time," he explains. "PhyreEngine is not really equipped to support that, so internally, we have to adjust the coding and adjust the engine to make this happen. It turns out that this extra trouble isn't so much more work than making our own engine to begin with."

Deleted member 5596 · Dec 18, 2019

Their current games have been having issues with porting to different platforms. Why not choose a multiplatform 3rd party engine so when companies port your games don't end on mess like Ys VIII PC/Switch?

Bonejack · Dec 18, 2019

Relaxed Muscle said:
Their current games have been having issues with porting to different platforms. Why not choose a multiplatform 3rd party engine so when companies port your games don't end on mess like Ys VIII PC/Switch?

I mean you answered your own question, because those aren't done by Falcom.

Deleted member 9746 · Dec 18, 2019

Ravage said:
"To give a very specific example in Trails of Cold Steel 3, there's a part where 40 different character models are on screen at the same time,"

Oh, chapter 4... iconic.

Kudo · Dec 18, 2019

Honestly with how easily UE4 games share the same look (there are many exceptions to this but games easily fall to this category) I'm kinda looking forward to this.

Nuclear Muffin · Dec 18, 2019

Yet another bad decision on top of numerous bad decisions that Falcom have made over the years.

Falcom complain about not having enough manpower and then go ahead and waste untold resources on writing a new engine from scratch. And on top of that, it will almost certainly be built to target only the PS5; in an age where not only is the world going multiplatform, but where the PS5 will be largely irrelevent in their own domestic market (the market where they make the grand majority of their sales).

I will have no sympathy for them when they inevitably crash and burn trying to do this. It's like they have absolutely no ability to read the market whatsoever.

Deleted member 5596 · Dec 18, 2019

Bonejack said:
Because Falcom doesn't do those ports. Those are fully on their publising partners.

Yeah, but you can see on how hard had to work Durante on the PC ports of CS1 and 2, does facilitates the work of these publishing partners and is easily to avoid bad port jobs if you have a fully multiplatform engine.

garion333 · Dec 18, 2019

Oreiller said:
Their games already run poorly so it doesn't bode well.

Or that's exactly the point.

Relaxed Muscle said:
Yeah, but you can see on how hard had to work Durante on the PC ports of CS1 and 2, does facilitates the work of these publishing partners and is easily to avoid bad port jobs if you have a fully multiplatform engine.

Right, I think this is a longterm choice for them to make it easier for their games to be on everything. That probably includes mobile too.

Wing Scarab · Dec 18, 2019

MatrixMan.exe said:
I'm not talking about Epic specifically as I know the nonsense that comes with licensing out their engine as we use it as well.

There's obviously benefits to creating your own proprietary, but I question what that's going to let them do vs. what they already use, and will those benefits outweigh the time and cost of making R&D on your own engine.

The issue right now is that we just don't know where Falcom wants to take their games next. If they plan to go bigger in production values then a new engine does make sense.

That was my assumption as well. They must be creating a new engine in order to increase the production value for their games.

Deleted member 9746 · Dec 18, 2019

Nuclear Muffin said:
Yet another bad decision on top of numerous bad decisions that Falcom have made over the years.

Falcom complain about not having enough manpower and then go ahead and waste untold resources on writing a new engine from scratch. And on top of that, it will almost certainly be built to target only the PS5; in an age where not only is the world going multiplatform, but where the PS5 will be largely irrelevent in their own domestic market (the market where they make the grand majority of their sales).

I will have no sympathy for them when they inevitably crash and burn trying to do this. It's like they have absolutely no ability to read the market whatsoever.

Kings of making bad decisions and having record profits. When will Square Enix tbh...

AllEchse · Dec 18, 2019

Warukyure said:
From what has been said in the past, Sony's PhyreEngine is free to use and is pretty much covered by the royalties paid game sales. A lot of JRPGs were made using Phyre, even square-enix's world of final fantasy.
It is literally the "free-est" engine out there and they want to make their own? Heck they have a semi-custom one for the most recent Ys don't they? And didn't that have performance issues?

I guess they just want total freesom what to do with it and where to put their games.
And they are just kinda oldtimey.

Nuclear Muffin · Dec 18, 2019

Pringles said:
Kings of making bad decisions and having record profits. When will Square Enix tbh...

Those profits have nothing to do with their collapsing video game business and everything to do with external licensing.

Bonejack · Dec 18, 2019

Relaxed Muscle said:
Yeah, but you can see on how hard had to work Durante on the PC ports of CS1 and 2, does facilitates the work of these publishing partners and is easily to avoid bad port jobs if you have a fully multiplatform engine.

Don't get me wrong, i would appreciate if they would have multiplatform development on mind in terms of engines ... but Falcom always felt a bit on the "Got mine" mentality. Gut feeling, but i don't think the decision makers there give much damn about the effort their contracting partners have for those ports.

Łazy · Dec 18, 2019

Kromeo said:
They're talking about the market for their own games. I don't know how right they are but they obviously think Japanese Falcom fans mostly want to play on PS4

I'd like it to be true but maybe read again.
English might not be my innate language, I don't see how it meant that.

I know Falcom considers the fans to be on sony system in Japan (they have no choice), but that wasn't what the person I'm quoting was saying, or the wording is extremely weird and I'm sorry that I don't understand it.

koutoru · Dec 18, 2019

Looks like (among other reasons) the reasons why they went with their own engine is due to enigne support issues that may arise that they already experienced with PhyreEngine.

Also, it's interesting to see how even within Falcom the engineers were divided on whether to go with UE4 or not:

There's actually a split between the team's veteran programmers who would rather make their own engine while the younger staff question why they don't just use Unreal. Kondo laughs, "Even within the company, we can't come to a consensus!"

Eurogamer interview

Perhaps, for the level of visual fidelity that they hope to achieve, they figured that they could just create their own engine and get a satisfactory result while also being able to solve any internal engine issues themselves along the way instead of having a long drawn out back and forth support discussion with either Sony or Epic.

EDIT: Seems like they also threw XSEED under the bus for lack of dual audio support in their localizations.

Issen · Dec 18, 2019

Not a very wise decision, especially given their size.

Valcrist · Dec 18, 2019

These pieces of interviews are painting a better picture why they chose to do this, now.

Deleted member 9746 · Dec 18, 2019

Nuclear Muffin said:
Those profits have nothing to do with their collapsing video game business and everything to do with external licensing.

Do you mean the external licensing that's responsible for 30% of their profits this year? I wonder where the rest comes from... what a mystery.

ParsnipForest · Dec 18, 2019

Ravage said:
Why they didn't go with UE
"We've actually had Epic come in the past to give us a walkthrough of Unreal," says Kondo. "I don't want to say bad things about any company's engine, but when you're using a different engine, and problems arise, it's often difficult to figure out if this a problem on our side or with the engine. That could take a lot of time and energy."

Old-school JP dev mentality. Yu Suzuki had the exact same concerns with UE4 but admitted Epic had been very helpful throughout the development of Shenmue III, and that the positives far outweigh the negatives when it comes working with a "black box" like UE4.

Anyway, however they do it, I'm excited at the possibility of Falcom games that...don't look like HD PS2 games? I don't mean that in a lazy "looks old!!" type way, I mean their games have literally looked like up-ressed PS2 games...since the PS2 days. Not that I hate it. Sometimes it's quite appealing.

ILikeFeet · Dec 18, 2019

Kudo said:
Honestly with how easily UE4 games share the same look (there are many exceptions to this but games easily fall to this category) I'm kinda looking forward to this.

You can say the same thing about any engine, even Falcom's games

ContraWars · Dec 18, 2019

This company is the perfect target for Xbox.

Deleted member 12790 · Dec 18, 2019

ContraWars said:
This company is the perfect target for Xbox.

it would be legitimately depressing for such a foundational, long running, independent studio to be gobbled up like that.

Korigama · Dec 18, 2019

I really don't see the point in sinking time and resources into such a thing that far larger developers have struggled with instead of just licensing UE4 like the rest of Japan is doing.

ContraWars said:
This company is the perfect target for Xbox.

Not the way they operate (Trails games have massive scripts and localization doesn't begin ahead of JP releases because they always end up making constant changes to story and/or gameplay during development). Guaranteed their games would sell even less as Xbox console exclusives, and they don't bother making their own PC ports anymore.

Encephalon · Dec 18, 2019

ContraWars said:
This company is the perfect target for Xbox.

This is a company that operates almost entirely off of their legacy, and you want to remove them from that to place them on a platform that has no presence within the Japanese market?

ILikeFeet · Dec 18, 2019

there are always reasons to be rolling your own engine, but at the same time, I think Falcom's situation would be better solved by going third party. though they could always just add multiplatform support to their new engine, but their comments about their perception of their audience tells me that's not going to happen

noyram23 · Dec 18, 2019

ContraWars said:
This company is the perfect target for Xbox.

Xbox should buy them along with Nintendo and possibly Konami? Konami have all the great IPs like that pachinko game

Vylash · Dec 18, 2019

Pringles said:
Do you mean the external licensing that's responsible for 30% of their profits this year? I wonder where the rest comes from... what a mystery.

That has nothing to do with their collapsing external licensing business and everything to do with their video games

ContraWars · Dec 18, 2019

Microsoft has the need for JRPGs and mobile games for xCloud. They have the resources. Falcom could grow like Squaresoft and Enix did and as 1st party in Japan could potentially be better off. Consolidation happens. Better Xbox than another Tencent acquisition.

I wouldn't feel bad about it.

Kida · Dec 18, 2019

Love all the armchair devs in here. Falcom have just had their best ever year. They know their own workflow and what is best for them.

Hu3 · Dec 18, 2019

Nuclear Muffin said:
Those profits have nothing to do with their collapsing video game business and everything to do with external licensing.

You got to love delusional fanboyism living in a bubble. Like, collapsing, irrelevant ?, for real ?, the ecosystem with 100 million plus users is irrelevant, you want to compare one market and a tiny one to boot to a global dominance.

But hey x company is not making games for my favorite toy box they are doomed!!.

Like for real they know where their base is and that's why the are making the moves that are convenient for them. They are making an engine for future proofing and in-house engine that they don't have to pay royalties and for next gen consoles and pc.

Korigama · Dec 18, 2019

ContraWars said:
Microsoft has the need for JRPGs and mobile games for xCloud. They have the resources. Falcom could grow like Squaresoft and Enix did and as 1st party in Japan could potentially be better off. Consolidation happens. Better Xbox than another Tencent acquisition.

I wouldn't feel bad about it.

They could've been well on their way to growing larger by now, they've kept the company quite small deliberately. Either way, Microsoft's needs are their problem, and given the inability of the Xbox brand to break through in the Japanese market several generations in a row and how going Xbox-exclusive with JRPGs didn't work out for developers who agreed to it with 360, I don't picture many JP developers volunteering to be gobbled up.

Dreamwriter · Dec 18, 2019

Small developers have been doing that throughout history, it's not a big deal. Especially if you are a smallish developer making AA games; if they need to have something super optimized for amazing AAA graphics with tons of effects on multiple platforms that's a different thing entirely, but otherwise, it's best to make a proprietary game engine made for your type of game. Even though it's convenient to start with a game engine that already does a lot of the things any game needs, there are a lot of overhead and unoptimized bits in a generic game engine made to work for all genres of games.

Also, it sounds like they've been using a Sony-made game engine and then hiring/licensing other companies to port their games to other platforms, which haven't always been smooth going. So making their own engine will allow them to make games either for non-Sony platforms or at least easier to port to non-Sony platforms.

justiceiro · Dec 18, 2019

Ravage said:
From their recent interview with Eurogamer

Why they didn't go with UE
"We've actually had Epic come in the past to give us a walkthrough of Unreal," says Kondo. "I don't want to say bad things about any company's engine, but when you're using a different engine, and problems arise, it's often difficult to figure out if this a problem on our side or with the engine. That could take a lot of time and energy."

Impetus to make a new engine
"To give a very specific example in Trails of Cold Steel 3, there's a part where 40 different character models are on screen at the same time," he explains. "PhyreEngine is not really equipped to support that, so internally, we have to adjust the coding and adjust the engine to make this happen. It turns out that this extra trouble isn't so much more work than making our own engine to begin with."

Well, souends like comes down to the fact that they don't have expertise with the engine, so they rather make their own than try to learn or hire people who know. If it's their choice, it not really a problem, so guys, please drop the cocky "Japanese old guard should give way to the superior western industry standard technology" attitude.

Modest_Modsoul · Dec 18, 2019

Please let it be new & better graphics + art direction...

I look at their new future game, Hajimari no Kiseki (Tales of the Beginning), and it's not different from Cold Steel & Ys IX... : (

HBK · Dec 18, 2019

Wait, what engine were they using? I thought they had their own engine already ...

Deleted member 9746 · Dec 18, 2019

HBK said:
Wait, what engine were they using? I thought they had their own engine already ...

PhyreEngine for Trails and Yamaneko for Ys.

Falcom developing their own engine.

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