{"id":49934,"date":"2025-07-10T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=49934"},"modified":"2025-07-10T16:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T07:48:07","slug":"koei-tecmo-made-significant-investments-in-further-development-of-its-in-house-game-engine-the-katana-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/koei-tecmo-made-significant-investments-in-further-development-of-its-in-house-game-engine-the-katana-engine\/","title":{"rendered":"Koei Tecmo made significant investments in further development of its in-house game engine, the Katana Engine\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Koei Tecmo\u2019s research and development (R&amp;D) expenses in the recently ended fiscal year (April 1, 2025 \u2013 March 31, 2025) were 39% higher than the previous year. As reported by <a href=\"https:\/\/gamebiz.jp\/news\/408842\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">GameBiz<\/a>, a big part of these expenses went toward further development of Koei Tecmo\u2019s proprietary game engine, the <strong>Katana Engine<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1528\" height=\"857\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1528px) 100vw, 1528px\" src=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-002.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49939\" srcset=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-002.jpg 1528w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-002-380x213.jpg 380w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-002-768x431.jpg 768w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Katana Engine is Koei Tecmo\u2019s primary game engine, currently used for the majority of their titles. It\u2019s compatible with a variety of genres \u2013 from 3D action games like Dynasty Warriors: Origins and Rise of the Ronin, to tactical sims like Nobunaga\u2019s Ambition. Throughout the years, the engine <a href=\"https:\/\/www.koeitecmo.co.jp\/recruit\/graduate\/member\/vol-08\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">has been tuned for both<\/a> photorealistic lighting rendering and the \u201cnon-realistic,\u201d anime style you see in Atelier games. It supports procedural content generation, which allows developers to generate terrain models based on sketches and create facial expressions for characters based on 2D assets (source: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.denfaminicogamer.jp\/kikakuthetower\/241107u\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Denfaminicogamer<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1437\" height=\"808\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1437px) 100vw, 1437px\" src=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-001.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49938\" srcset=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-001.jpg 1437w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-001-380x214.jpg 380w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-001-768x432.jpg 768w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.koeitecmo.co.jp\/recruit\/graduate\/member\/vol-08\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Koei Tecmo engineer and R&amp;D lead Hirosato Mishima<\/a>, the company is committed to developing its own engine as opposed to using third-party engines, as this significantly shortens the iteration process (trial-and-error) of turning ideas and theories into reality.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cKoei Tecmo has the technical capabilities to build top-tier game engines completely in-house. We\u2019re one of the rare studios able to prepare our own development environment for new [gaming] platforms as they appear. We don\u2019t have to wait for middleware providers to issue updates; we can immediately act on new or interesting ideas.\u201d Mishima believes that this kind of self-sufficiency is \u201can indispensable qualification\u201d for any game developer aspiring to compete in the global market.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Koei Tecmo is committed to developing its own Katana Engine, as opposed to relying on third-party engines like Unity or Unreal Engine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":49937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,3],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-49934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-development","category-news","tag-japan-related-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Koei Tecmo made significant investments in further development of its in-house game engine, the Katana Engine\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Koei Tecmo is committed to developing its own Katana Engine, as opposed to relying on third-party engines like Unity or Unreal Engine.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/koei-tecmo-made-significant-investments-in-further-development-of-its-in-house-game-engine-the-katana-engine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Koei Tecmo made significant investments in further development of its in-house game engine, the Katana Engine\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Koei Tecmo is committed to developing its own Katana Engine, as opposed to relying on third-party engines like Unity or Unreal Engine.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/koei-tecmo-made-significant-investments-in-further-development-of-its-in-house-game-engine-the-katana-engine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"AUTOMATON WEST\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-10T13:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250710-49934-header.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1253\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"711\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amber V\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@AUTOMATON_ENG\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@AUTOMATON_ENG\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amber V\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Koei Tecmo made significant investments in further development of its in-house game engine, the Katana Engine\u00a0 - 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Currently devoted to growing Automaton West to the size of its Japanese sister-site, while making sure to keep news concise and developer stories deep and stimulating.","url":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/author\/amber-vjestica\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49934"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49941,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49934\/revisions\/49941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}