Monolith Soft is working on an in-house game engine that builds upon the Xenoblade engine for use in other titles  

Xenoblade Chronicle series developer Monolith Soft is currently working on the development of an in-house game engine. The company’s COO Tetsuya Takahashi and lead programmer Michihiko Inaba talked about their technological efforts in a recent interview with CGworld. 

With the scale of Monolith Soft’s projects growing, and the developer “no longer being able to do things with a small number of people,” as Takashi puts it, the company has newly founded an in-house R&D department. Through it, the developer aims to adapt to the needs of large-scale game development by streamlining development processes and reducing man-hours using new technology. 

A big part of these efforts is the development of an in-house game engine. According to Inaba, Monolith Soft’s currently in-development engine is based on the engine they originally created in 2010 for Xenoblade Chronicles. They are currently working on expanding it for use in other titles. 

According to Takahashi, despite being difficult to create and maintain, an in-house game engine is a necessity for Monolith Soft. “For the kind of games we are currently developing, we do not have the option of using third-party game engines. In-house engines are easier to customize to meet our needs.” 

At the moment, Monolith Soft’s various development teams are working in parallel on different technologies that will be integrated into the in-house engine. Inaba mentions model rendering and effect engines currently being in the works.