Konami Scraps Fox Engine And Moves To Unreal Engine 5

Konami’s Fox Engine – Hideo Kojima‘s masterpiece game engine – is known for bringing us titles such as PES 2014, Metal Gear Solid titles, and the engine’s swansong will be eFootball PES 2020. Kojima developed the engine for Konami in 2010, but since then the relationship has been somewhat estranged, when they suddenly separated in 2015.

Fox Engine

The Fox Engine is a proprietary cross-platform, cross-generational game engine built by Konami Digital Entertainment (previously Kojima Productions) for use in Konami games. The engine’s development began after the completion of 2008’s Metal Gear Solid 4 , with the goal of making the “best engine in the world.”

The gaming world suddenly realised the importance of Solid Snake in gamelore, but gamers did not rally as expected for the release of Metal Gear Survive – sans Kojima. It was widely thought that the end had come for Solid Snake. Reddit, the ever humble front page of the internet, had this to say about Metal Gear Survive:

I could not stand the voice acting in MGSurvive. Mediocre hour for sure. Also, everyone spoke in a step-by-step fashion and they over explained EVERYTHING! I finished the story of course, but I had to mute the cutscenes and just read the subtitles. lol
As for the game itself, I would not recommend it to anyone. It was boring and redundant. Online was dead in first week and buggy as hell.
– Username Deleted

The game is such a grind and it’s already dead on Xbox servers until it becomes free or on sale… Again. I got it Day 1. Got the nice things it came with and… After investing many hours into it. I felt repulsed by it. It’s just grinding over and over and defending your base against increasing waves of zombies. It’s pretty repetitive.
TL;DR – Fun with friends… For awhile. Not worth it IMHO.
– CatsHighAsf

It’s not the worst game in existence and it isn’t nearly as cash-grabby as GZ was. But the problem is that the game is kinda cynical and soulless. Nothing about it feels like Metal Gear despite V’s mechanics and the aesthetic. And the thing is, Metal Gear Zombies could’ve been a really fun game if they went the Saints Row approach and just went balls to the wall crazy.
Main problem with Surviveance, or rather, the real problem is that it doesn’t have a budget, and it shows. It’s easy to enjoy, but unlike any other MGS game or spinoff game, there’s not much to it once you finish up. And for a game initially marketed as V with co-op, there’s only 5 maps of co-op and 2 modes, and it’s now been over a year since launch.
– MGSF_Departed

So, with all that taken into consideration, things did not look to rosy for the hardcore Fox Engine fans. Also worth noting, is that Konami had been noticed channelling their energy into their casinos and pachinko machines since they parted ways with Kojima, with notably less funding being sent to their game development houses.

Konami Unreal Engine 5 Titles

The big news, then, is that Konami have decided to build their upcoming titles on Unreal Engine 5; with the inaugural game being PES 2022.

It is not surprising they have decided to change lanes in such a big way. Epic are a mammoth right now in the gaming arena, and Unreal Engine has great pedigree. Couple that with the fact that Fox Engine hasn’t been updated or had the dust blown off since Kojima Productions took a walk.

This is big news – and some would argue it is not great news – for the industry on the whole. Since Epic decided to make Unreal free for developers, as well as offering free access to Quixel Megascans, there will be a huge amount of indie releases pretty soon, with Epic right at the front waving the flag. So the question is: is it a good thing that one engine developer should garner such power?

So long, Fox Engine. And thanks for all the fish.