Hideo Kojima's Fox Engine has been abandoned by Konami in favor of Unreal Engine 5. This will be another big win for Epic Games, as Konami doesn't seem to have plans for building a new engine anytime soon.

Konami have also been distancing themselves from former star employee Hideo Kojima and his work ever since their bombastic and sudden separation back in 2015. Kojima developed the Fox Engine for Konami back in the early 2010s, and it was purpose-built for the Metal Gear series - particularly Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and its ill-fated potential sequels. After Kojima's departure, the fate of the Metal Gear series was up in the air, and, after a disastrous launch of Metal Gear Survive without the series creator, it has seemed likely that Solid Snake has permanently retired. The death of Metal Gear's only engine adds to the franchise's resigned fate. Konami has also been focusing their energies more on their casino's and pachinko machines since the split, with less and less of their resources going to their games.

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According to GearNuke, all new games in the Pro Evolution Soccer series will be built in Unreal Engine 5, starting with PES 2022. After Kojima Productions left Konami there hasn't been a team dedicated to updating and maintaining the engine, so it has grown outdated in that time. The engine just recently turned eight years old back in June, and that's around the same amount of time that Unreal Engine 3 was used before Unreal Engine 4 released.

It takes a lot of resources and time to create a working engine that can be used and relied upon for several games in a series. Companies often try to stretch out how long they can use an engine for before they have to retool it for a new console release or before it just simply isn't as optimized as it used to be. For a popular example, Nintendo took years to make The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's engine which they are using for its sequel. It's no coincidence that game launched around the same time as the Switch so the studio could capitalize on their work as long as possible. With the launch of Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 right around the corner and with no progress toward a Fox Engine 2 made, it follows that Konami has opted to use another company's engine to save on cost and time that can be used on next-gen game development.

While it is a sound business decision, it's sad to see Konami taking another big step away from being a real competitor in game development and publishing. They were once one of the biggest names in gaming, and now their series sit mostly shelved. Castlevania hasn't had a new release since 2014, Metal Gear hasn't been the same since Kojima left, and Silent Hill seems forgotten since P.T.'s collapse. Meanwhile, the publisher's using its money and resources to use the Unreal Engine, feeding Epic's ever-deepening pockets and power. The death of the Fox Engine isn't much on its own, but it's one of marker signifying the changing of players within the industry.

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Source: GearNuke