Bungie Says New Multiplatform Game Engine Is a Challenge

Video game developer Bungie, which has long been associated with the very successful Halo series, is now working with publisher Activision Blizzard on a new game world and, while not yet ready to reveal its new title, one leading developer is ready to talk about the challenges of its new project.

Speaking to Gamasutra Hao Chen, who is the senior graphics architect working for Bungie, has told Gamasutra that, “We have a brand new game, a brand new IP. Our project right now is at a very exciting stage. For the first time we're now shipping on multiple platforms, and then the new consoles are at least not far on the horizon.”

The developer says that Bungie needs to make sure that any new game engine created in-house is able to deal with the potential hardware changes introduced by a new generation of gaming hardware, which means working closely with companies like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo even when their own future plans are not clear.

Chen added, “So we place a huge amount of emphasis on this architecture that allows us to be efficient in a multi-core, multi-threaded environment, and then we hide all the platform complexity without losing the ability to be efficient with the rest of the game engine. The majority of the challenge comes from this design problem.”

The Bungie developer also says that his company has an idea about what the future might bring and is postponing making any decisions that could lead to big incompatibilities.

Bungie has not offered any hints about what kind of game it is working on at the moment but rumors suggest that it might be a MMO first person shooter.

Neither Sony nor Microsoft have so far made any official announcements linked to their next home console but analysts are saying that official information might be offered at the 2012 edition of E3.