News has emerged that Epic Games' powerful Unreal® Engine 3 has been licensed by Square Enix, the company most famous for Final Fantasy® (under the name Squaresoft) and Kingdom Hearts®, according to a press release from Square Enix Europe. Since the early years of their careers as game developers, Squaresoft and Enix have both tried to push the boundaries of the platforms they developed for. Titles such as Final Fantasy XII, Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts 2 are the most recent games which will prove this fact. Now merged together, Square Enix are looking to move out of their field of optimization and instead hop on the technological advancement bandwagon. Taku Murata, the General Manager of Research and Development for Square Enix, released the following statement on this license acquisition: “The complexity of next-generation game systems featuring HD graphics and multi-core parallel processing poses a number of technological challenges to our game development. However, we can expedite our game development process significantly while allowing extra time and resources to be spent on game design and mechanics by establishing an effective technology platform. The technology platform for game development is becoming more important than ever. I'm excited to be partnering with Epic Games in such an important area.” Epic Games' Vice President, Jay Wilbur, stated “We’re extremely excited to be working with Square Enix. Square Enix is one of the biggest and most influential companies in the world-wide game business, and having them work with Unreal Engine 3 is a major honor for us and something we’re very proud to be announcing.” So, what does this mean for the future of Unreal Engine 3? Well, it's certainly a strong indication that it won't just be another standard-issue FPS engine. Many members of the UT community know of the power of UE3, and many long-time fans of Square Enix's franchises will know that they always get the best out of whatever resources they happen to be working with. One thing remains clear. The end result of this union will be an interesting thing to see. Other licensees for Unreal Engine 3 include Sony, Gearbox Software, THQ, Buena Vista Games, and Atari.