Emergent porting Gamebryo Engine to Wii

by JC Fletcher { Sep 12th 2007 at 4:30PM }

The Gamebryo development engine, used for games including The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Civilization IV, and many Xbox Live Arcade games, is being ported to the Wii.

The engine, which is specifically designed to facilitate multiplatform development, should make it easier for developers to create Wii games using the same development tools as Xbox 360, PS3, and PC games. The new version 2.3 includes in its Wii support "a Wii-specific viewer, extensive libraries and APIs to simplify pipeline integration."

We don't pretend to know the first thing about technical game development, and we're certainly not going to applaud porting by any means, but we think that anything that makes it simpler or more cost-effective for developers to create Wii games is a positive development. Does this mean a Wii Oblivion is on the way? Not without a hard drive, it doesn't.

Tags: development, emergent, engine, gamebryo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

hvnlysoldr (NDF - Wind Ring) @ Sep 12th 2007 4:52PM

Good news everyone.

Patrick @ Sep 12th 2007 4:57PM

Why would it need a hard drive for Oblivion?

hvnlysoldr (NDF - Wind Ring) @ Sep 12th 2007 5:14PM

Oblivion has expansions that don't normally fit on disks and to access all the content it needs a hard drive to put all the files onto.

Patrick @ Sep 12th 2007 5:23PM

Ah. Makes sense. Thanks =)

(Maybe they can make an Oblivion Lite? lol)

Mr Khan @ Sep 12th 2007 6:12PM

They WERE doing Oblivion Lite, it was for PSP, and is now in vaporware-ville

but i'm not sure if this is good news or bad news, sure it makes down-ports like SCIV and RE5 possible, but won't that just wind up with the gaming media comparing how much "suckier" the wii down-ports are?

mian @ Sep 12th 2007 6:29PM

Oblivion GOTY will have the main expansions put together with it, but even without that, you don't have to be able to download expansions to play the game. I don't know if the console version of Oblivion allows the users mods that the PC version does, but a great many such mods could fit on the Wii's limited space. Most (those without special textures) are mere kilobytes.

Bethesda has already expressed their opinion of the system though: not worthless, but not worth putting Oblivion on. Getting Oblivion is not a technical problem (much as I'd like to see some some new hardware--hard disk and voice chat, for instance), it's a snotty developer problem.

sonicspear64 @ Sep 12th 2007 7:52PM

Well OldBlivion made it possible for TES4 to be run on much older PC hardware. A Wii version is definitely possible, but probably not worth the trouble of developing. Still, this is really great news!

WIIBOY101GEZZA @ Sep 13th 2007 9:55AM

the wii dosnt need a harddrive, its a fine data streamer from disc,and anything a harddrive can do a flash card can do "FASTER" it pisses mii of wen ignorant asswipes try to say a games machine requires a hardrive NO IT DOES NOT...SHERE IGNORANCE AND PC BRAINWASHING

THE LARGE FILES CAN GO ON A FLASH CARD AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR

AWAKE FROM BILL GATES BRAINWASHING NEXT WE SHALL BE TOLD WII NEED A PC TO MAKE TOAST