Exient to release its XGS engine to third-parties

UK studio Exient is preparing to enter the middleware space by releasing its proprietary game engine XGS to third-party developers.

Originally developed for the Nokia N-Gage, the tech has been used by the studio for a number of years as key cornerstone of the company’s output.

Speaking to Develop, Exient CTO Jason Fielder said the engine offered a good low overhead solution and a powerful GUI technology that allows highly optimised shaders to be created for current and next-gen consoles, without a single line of shader code.

XGS also supports key framing, animation blending and overlaying and inverse kinematics.

Fielder said the engine was at home being used to create football, racing, FPS and 2D sprite games.

After years of using the engine internally, the company is now looking at how to distribute an SDK for third-party developers to take advantage of.

“We are investing a lot of resource into packaging the engine into a full, distributable SDK that is easy to pick up and use by those who don’t have the benefit of the engine’s authors sat across the studio from them,” said Fielder.

“As we do this, we see that we’re able to release it to other developers and expand our business in that direction. An attraction for us is that we’ll be able to grow and improve the technology faster from the extra external feedback we’ll receive, and provide the community with another option to the already established middleware out there.”

You can read our full feature on the XGS engine here.