Electronic Arts, Midway, THQ…eh, no one was surprised to find out that they'd be using Epic's middleware workhorse Unreal Engine III. But Square-Enix? Yeah, it's a little off the map for, but it is indeed true. Square-Enix has issued an announcement that they've secured rights to use the Unreal Engine III for their development of next-generation titles. Exactly what content this will be remains to be seen. We can conclude that it will not be a PS3 Final Fantasy title, because we know that FFXIII (and its variants) is using an in-house engine called the "White Engine". Skepticism leads us to imagine that perhaps Square-Enix is planning a multi-platform game and is interested in UEIII because of its flexibility.
The announcement says the decision to license the engine is to "ensure both game quality and development efficiency." General Manager of Research and Development, Taku Murata notes: "The complexity of next-generation game systems featuring HD graphics and multicore parallel processing poses a number of technological challenges to our game development. However, we can expedite our game development process significantly while allowing extra time and resources to be spent on game design and mechanics by establishing an effective technology platform."
We look forward to seeing what the results of this announcement will yield.