Today, it was officially announced that Ready at Dawn, the studio responsible for God of War: Chains of Olympus and the Wii Okami port, will be entering the market of engine licensing.
The engine, which will launch with support for PS3, PSP, and Xbox 360, will be the "only comprehensive and fully integrated console game development platform designed for the creation of cutting-edge AAA interactive entertainment. The studio will integrate its proprietary code-base with the top providers of 3D content editing, audio, user interface and asset management systems, all packaged into a single ready-to-use game platform."
As a company who is "faced with the challenges of making a great game everyday", Ready at Dawn wanted to build an engine for developers "who are tired of the challenges of PC engines shoe-horned into consoles, or trying to stitch together layers upon layers of middleware from multiple vendors."
Within the next few weeks, Ready at Dawn will be starting a private beta of their engine that they will ship to select partners in order to gain feedback. According to Gamasutra, the engine is expected to have a definite release date later this year.
Ah middleware, you gotta love it. Seriously, this type of stuff allows developers to focus on the more important parts of development and less on the engine type stuff.
Unfortunately, in the case of something like the Unreal Engine 3, it's produced some fairly homogeneous results. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the engine, just that it enables lower-tier developers to make stuff that looks and behaves slightly better than it really is.
