Microsoft exploring use of Unreal Engine 5 across multiple Xbox studios

pcinvasion.com:

In a recent interview on the Major Nelson Podcast, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty spoke briefly about State of Decay 3 and revealed that the game runs on Unreal Engine 5. He also talked about something quite interesting on the development side of Xbox Games Studios. Multiple studios under Xbox’s umbrella are experimenting with Unreal Engine 5, and they have been holding internal summits to share ideas and train people on how to best use the engine.

Precious little was gone over, but what was said was intriguing. Firstly, Booty went over a practice Xbox Game Studios has for sharing and training on tech:

“We have a structure in place, we just call them summits, where we get subject matter experts together for one or two days. We’ve had animation summits, UI summits, Unreal Engine summits, physics summits, etc. I think we did in the last year close to 25 of these. That’s our main mechanism for teams to share technology back and forth.”

What’s interesting to note about using Unreal Engine 5 is that Xbox Game Studios has access to several in-house engines. These include Slipspace for Halo Infinite, id Tech 7 for Doom Eternal, and Creation Engine 2 for most Bethesda titles, just to name a few engines.

Once the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard goes through, Xbox will have access to even more engines. The choice to outsource to the industry standard Unreal 5 is important and curious.

Most large publishers tend towards developing custom in-house engines that can then be dispersed to the smaller studios within the corporate structure. Ubisoft has Snowdrop, Sony has Decima, EA has Frostbite, etc.

Ubisoft’s developing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on its new iteration of Snowdrop.

Unreal Engine 5 has dominated the news cycles