Fox Engine, A Failure ?

It's a good engine. No need to hate on it.

Looked great and ran great.

@uninspiredcup: Looking great isn't something special since lots of old 3D games still look great.(Rogue Squadron 2 for example)

As for running great that's because it never tried to push the graphics that much since it was designed for PS3 and Xbox 360.

Edit: Also imo that engine wasn't great for open world games since it had problem streaming the whole map fast enough which is why all vehicles were too slow in Phantom Pain.

Well, works fine and looks good on a shitty laptop, all I give a shit about really.

More games on the Fox engine would be a great thing.

But Konami doesn't make games anymore.

Why is not anyone remaking MGS1 on fox engine???!

@ghosts4ever: Why do you want a remake of MGS 1 in fox engine anyway ?

MGS V's gameplay doesn't work well in tight spaces.(Also half of the game will be some stupid cutscenes)

It was and is a proper next generation development engine. Something that could be iterate on as the foundation support next generation development. Fantastic engine ahead of its time for a wrong japanese publisher. Looks great and ran great. Separate the Kojima Konami bullshit it was the right thing to do. You saw how slow the other japanese publishers were to adept this gen and thank god for Unreal. You want to talk about failure ask square enix about Luminous engine. Re engine should have been made earlier.

its because MGS1 is by far best in series. it definitely need a remake in fox engine.

An yet that Engine never had anything special compare to other engines such as Unreal 4. It only looked great due to good art design and it ran well because it was actually a Xbox 360 and PS3 engine disguised as a next gen engine.

As I said it was an engine that came ready with next generation features. MGS 5 was made for the 360 and ps3 in mind looked and ran great. If things worked out like the other engines it would have been cranked up. Assets would have been upgraded as it supports building assets into a database. Seminal features found in these next gen engine like RE engine for example. I dont know if you understand this. MGS 5 does not eaqual end of the line for the engine. That does not represent end of the line development work that is only a first version if you will. The important of engines like Fox Engine was getting ready for next generation development. Not only supporting rendering features but most important is the way of how game development works today. Something that japanese publishers were behind on.

I feel like you are confusing widespread use with how good the engine is. Your example of MGS is just weird - an engine that allows a game to look great AND run at 60fps on the toasters that are the ps4 and x1? That's, like, the lay definition of a good engine. Your argument that they didn't push the systems hard enough is also confusing - that has nothing to do with whether the engine is good or not, except perhaps to further underscore the point that a lot of games run worse on the same hardware on other engines - while also looking the same or worse. I.e., it seems to be a good engine.

Commercial failure perhaps

How many games have they released to actually have the opportunity to use it? PES and MGS V? PT got the super cancel, so we'll never really know. Konami doesn't seem interested in making AAA video games anymore.

I think the only game I played that used it was Metal Gear Solid V on the Xbox One and it looked and played great so that was good enough for me.

MGS V still looks pretty damned good on PS4.

Easily passed by RDR 2 I guess, but it still held up with any open world game and ran 60fps. The "engine" is fine, the problem is that company won't be using it any more. So we'll never know how it would have worked with newer games. You are saying the engine was a failure because it was old, but wasn't it basically designed for MGS V? That makes the engine as old as the game. What "newer" engine would they have used to make MGS V better - time travel into the future? Your argument makes no sense.

Yeah, I'm not even sure they made the engine "available" for other devs to use like Unreal or CryEngine. It was just for internal usage, and basically just for MGS. Though I guess they switched PES over to that engine as well, I doubt they've made substantial updates without any new AAA games in their pipeline.

If they used Unreal Engine 3.5 or 4 it would be a better choice since they could at least finish the game before the start of the PS4 and Xbox 1 generation.(Since the game didn't have any groundbreaking features that old consoles couldn't handle, and it's open world wasn't anything special to take a lot of time.)

Looking great isn't really that hard. Just insert Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 on PS4 make it 1080P and it will look great and run perfectly.(And the game was 60 FPS so it would be on the PS4)

id Tech 6 did the same thing but with this difference that Doom 4 looked far better than MGS V.

Seems like you are moving the goalposts, or making two different arguments.

Was the Fox Engine a bad business decision? Sure. Considering they developed an all new engine and then basically quit making games, that is a pretty easy conclusion.

But not sure there was anything technically wrong with the engine. The Fox Engine itself was not a failure, it did what it was meant to do, port games smoothly across mulitple platforms - specifically MGS V. The results were impressive at the time. Problem is you are talking about work that was done in 2010,2011,2012, of course it is going to look "dated" today. It didn't look dated at the time the game came out. Since Konomi quit making games, they probably haven't put any work whatsoever into improving Fox Engine. Basically just copy+paste PES game, and then a reskin off MGS in the MGS Survive game. Whereas other engines, such as Unreal, get better and evolve as the gen goes on.

It was extremely well-optimized (Ground Zeroes ran flawlessly on my old laptop that could barely run Skyrim at a decent framerate on High settings) and looked damn good for how well it ran.

MGS ran great on PC.

Works well across many systems and hardware configs.

Seems like a good engine to me.

@ghosts4ever: Probably because the only developers who would choose to use the Fox Engine over Unreal or another engine work at Konami, and Konami really doesn’t have game developers outside of PES.

The engine was fantastic. Its failings weren’t technical but strategic (largely the fault of FucKonami).

$ue invented SAVE

It was a great scalable engine. It made MGSV look great on high-end hardware yet also be playable on low-end hardware. It also paved the way for PES to make a comeback as the footie gameplay king.

But unfortunately, the engine's potential was limited by Konami's business decisions. They fired Kojima and wrecked MGS. And then they proceeded to do the same to PES by cheaping-out on licenses and getting rid of Champion's League.

Regarding Konami...

Konami shows record operating profits

...Despite screwing-up so badly (wrecking franchises like MGS, Silent Hill, PES and Castlevania), Konami is still making profit. And not only is it making profit, but its profits have even hit an all-time high...

So where is most of Konami's cash coming from? Answer: Yu-Gi-Oh! It's one of the highest-grossing media franchises in the world, and Konami is milking that cash-cow with trading cards and mobile games.

@Jag85: I'm pretty sure that it was Kojima that wrecked Silent Hill , PES and castlevania franchises.

1.A lot of team silent staff went to Kojima productions after Silent Hill 4.

2.The PES team couldn't afford to make a new graphic engine in 2006-2012 era which is why FIFA gained the upper hand.(It was due to Kojima production projects having more budget compare to other Konami projects. Any project that wasn't for Kojma Production had no chance of success.)

3.Kojima made Kojima Productions to have much more creative freedom for games and also be able to delay his projects as much as he wanted which imo damaged Konami's other game projects.(Silent Hill Downpour, HD collection and Homecoming that weren't QA tested properly.)

4.Kojima was responsible for the disaster project known as Metal Gear Solid Rising that in the end he outsourced it to Platinum games.(I'm pretty sure they lost more money for it than gaining)

5.He hired Blueprints to do the remaster of MGS 2,3 while Konami was forced to hire a nobody developer for Silent Hill HD project.

6.Originally Lords of Shadow wasn't going to be a Castlevania game. but Kojima decided to make it a Castlevania game. He didn't inform Igrashi about this and when Igrashi realized this he felt betrayed and as a result left Konami.

7. Kojima also screwed up Zone Of Enders HD pretty badly.(Making 30 FPS ports while the PS2 version was 60 FPS.) and he cancelled Zone Of Enders 3 himself.

In terms of lighting it's very impressive but just because MGSV had below par textures and other things doesn't mean the engine can't do higher quality ones.

I make a game with Unreal Engine 4 and give it PS2 level textures......... doesn't mean that's all the engine can do ;)

It's a means to an end.

The real shame is they don't use it for much. They should license it out for coin.

Pretty sure no one outside of Konami ever wanted to use that engine.

What's wrong with it?

So much for Fuckonami, huh?

Hilarious. The rebel gamers and tabloid youtubers lose again. Can't wait to hear that fallout 76 is bringing in tons of cash for Bethesda.

@Bread_or_Decide:

Last I checked, Fallout 76 isn't F2P. The lack of F2P could limit its cash-making potential.

But another "sellout" game which gamers love to hate, Diablo Immortal, could potentially make a ton of cash, since it's an F2P mobile game.

Either way, always fun to see gamers prove to be a loud cry baby minority.

@dorog1995: Interesting theory. In reality, both Konami and Kojima are partly to blame for their fallout and the downfall of those franchises. And I doubt either are too sad about it. Konami is now more profitable, while Kojima now has more creative freedom. So it's a win-win for both parties.

I still play Yu-Gi-Oh Legacy of the Duelist and I been addicted ever since. It's the only Yu-Gi-Oh game I play as of now and I'm still a fan of the card game, but I stop following the Anime after Zexal.

Seeing Konami making it's money out of Yu-Gi-Oh isn't surprising, it's still popular in the U.S though.

@Bread_or_Decide: Many of those gamers are in a bubble that's out-of-touch with the reality of the modern game industry, which is now dominated by F2P games with microtransactions.

I would say it is a failure in its implementation, or use. But in terms of performance, that engine was really, really good, I felt. Very solid.

Konami is also making good money by it's mobile and japan exclusive arcade games too from what I've heard.

Yeah. Konami is also responsible for this since they should have realized that giving Kojima too much freedom might be a bad thing. Let's hope that Kojima has learnt from his mistakes for his new studio.

Nothing was "wrong" with it necessarily, as others said it seems to have been well optimized. But being a proprietary engine I'm guessing it wasn't necessarily user friendly or ready to be packaged/licensed out for anyone to pick up and run with out of the box. It was just something for their internal teams to work with. Could it have been? Sure. But it's probably too late now since i doubt Konami gives a f%@l. Do you think they've been updating it? I doubt that very much.

No because in the end it brought us MGSV: GZ & PP, and I put in something like 700 hours between the two, and am still playing the later.

@dorog1995: A big chunk of the MGSV budget went towards creating the Fox Engine. If Kojima Productions didn't develop Fox Engine, then I doubt Konami would've developed another AAA engine, and they probably would've just exited AAA development sooner.

I've heard only 1/4 of that budget went for Fox Engine.(Which means 20 million dollars.)

And if he didn't make Fox Engine, Konami would have just switched to other engines like Unreal Engine similar to Namco Bandai.(Whom used Unreal for Tekken 7,Ace Combat 7 and Soul Calibur 6.) so I doubt they would go out of AAA games sooner.

Would have been fine if Konami still made games.

@Fuhrer_D: I clocked in over 700 hours in MGV: TPP alone on the ps3. It's such an easy pick up and play game for me. I was getting close of having all the online weapons and stuff even if I was only using them in the single player.

Get this shit out of here. The premier game of the Fox Engine made back *all* of the development costs in its first day and continued to make more money with PES.

I think Iga is more pissed off about Konami then Kojima. As a developer seems to be on the side of Kojima Production, to him as long as Castlevania exist hes ok with that. Konami like the other japanese publishers were strugling to justify AAA console business that gets more expensive with risky payoff. Other businesses and mobile seems more lucrative. Taking that and adding Kojima who not only fits in to AAA spending but also tries to copy the western model you could see why it would not work. Konami is not EA or Activision. You could see this struggle just look how square-enix seems to blame everything on there werstern studios. See how they are basically killing those games off. How good the engine is should be separated from Konami bullshit. They simply did not want to continue working on AAA games. Did not want to invest on them as a business its there prerogative.

Every company eventually wants to invest on there own engines as you can see now days. Engines that they feel best express there games. That is the way to go for long term development. Unreal is a means for them to stay alive so they can invest later on. Its cheaper short term but Long term they don't want to keep paying for support.

I'm short a few of the online developed weapons, as I still am leveling up the various groups. I sign in a least once a week to send guys out for better guys (getting harder as pretty much everyone is S rank), and to spend the PF currency on better soldiers. I have all the FOB and platforms you can make.

Such a great game, and it keeps on giving.

It's much more that right after MGS V, Konami as a whole completely changed direction as a company so you didn't see it being used in other games since they aren't making other games. I thought MGS V looked great on the PC.