Nintendo Is Creating Middleware Tools Called Bezel Engine for Developers

ILikeFeet · Mar 30, 2018

originally spotted by David Gibson, and Plankton2

Plankton2 said:
Could just be a new gameplay idea they are testing with a prototype. Like the rabbits that were initially what splatoon was.

Or could just be a random tech demo. I'm sure they make dozens of these every year, and they just never pan out into full fledged games.

And just doing a google about GCC2018, the only presentation from Nintendo on their site is this...

NintendoWare Bezel Engine
Nintendo Switch game development environment choices provided by Nintendo

google Translated version

source: http://www.gc-conf.com

my thoughts:

an interesting development. much like Sony's Phyre Engine, it seems to be for third parties. but with options like Phyre, Unreal, and Unity, it's a question of what makes this inciting since this is more dedicated for Switch

Bandage · Mar 30, 2018

That's awesome.
Interested to see what their plans for the engine are and if it's cheap and easy for indies.

Comic Obsessed · Mar 30, 2018

Huh, hope this is helpful.

Wonder if that little prototype will become a full game.

Phendrift · Mar 30, 2018

This sounds good

Retromelon · Mar 30, 2018

Hopefully this can provide some support for programming languages that unity doesn't

Lite_Agent · Mar 30, 2018

That's pretty old news, actually. The infamous Vroom in the night sky uses that engine, irrc. Sumiko Gurashi on Switch uses it too, the demo is how some of us heard about it.

Edit: Rocket Studios list it as one of the engines they're using.

> http://www.rocketstd.co.jp/works.html

Deleted member 36622 · Mar 30, 2018

Woah Nintendo releasing an in-house engine for third party developers, that's big.

NSESN · Mar 30, 2018

Hopefully it means faster 3rd party games.

Comic Obsessed · Mar 30, 2018

Lite_Agent said:
That's pretty old news, actually. The infamous Vroom in the night sky uses that engine, irrc.

Well hell.

GDGF · Mar 30, 2018

Nintengine.

SleepSmasher · Mar 30, 2018

So this is probably the engine powering Odyssey, or BotW, or MK8/ARMS?
Edit: or a "light" version of it?

Deleted member 31092 · Mar 30, 2018

Comic Obsessed said:
Well hell.

The game would have been trash even on UE4, it's just a bad game.

justiceiro · Mar 30, 2018

Sounds something in line with the wiiu html5 framework, focused on produtivity rather than optimal resourse usage

ILikeFeet · Mar 30, 2018

Lite_Agent said:
That's pretty old news, actually. The infamous Vroom in the night sky uses that engine, irrc. Sumiko Gurashi on Switch uses it too, the demo is how some of us heard about it.

Edit: Rocket Studios list it as one of the engines they're using.

> http://www.rocketstd.co.jp/works.html

I know NintendoWare isnt new, but to have a name and a public demonstration of this is pretty new.

justiceiro said:
Sounds something in line with the wiiu html5 framework, focused on produtivity rather than optimal resourse usage

that was made by NST, this (seems?) to be made by the Japanese team. might be wrong though

Lite_Agent · Mar 30, 2018

felipepl said:
So this is probably the engine powering Odyssey, or BotW, or MK8/ARMS?
Edit: or a "light" version of it?

Of course it's not (that's be too big a deal for them not to publicly advertise outside dev. circles). It's an engine created specifically for 3rd party publishers/developers, especially small entities who want a low-cost, fast-to-develop engine. That's what the description above says.

ILikeFeet said:
I know NintendoWare isnt new, but to have a name and a public demonstration of this is pretty new.

that was made by NST, this (seems?) to be made by the Japanese team. might be wrong though

Public demonstration, I'll give you that. But we've known about the name for a while already > http://krsw.5ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1510301191/

Eolz · Mar 30, 2018

Saying the same thing than in another thread, but weird that they didn't introduce this at GDC. Wonder when it'll be put on the developer portal and in english, seems like an interesting move.
Doubt it'll ever end up being used as much as Sony's Phyre Engine (multiplat), but could be useful.

fiendcode · Mar 30, 2018

Phyre Engine isn't multiplat outside Sony ecosystem. Devs are just free to port it themselves, but it's not offically supported outside PlayStation.

Lite_Agent said:
That's pretty old news, actually. The infamous Vroom in the night sky uses that engine, irrc. Sumiko Gurashi on Switch uses it too, the demo is how some of us heard about it.

Edit: Rocket Studios list it as one of the engines they're using.

> http://www.rocketstd.co.jp/works.html

Yes, it's not new. It dates back to Wii actually, FFCC My Life as a King was the first 3rd party game to use it. This was before it was named or made available widely to 3rd parties.

ILikeFeet · Mar 30, 2018

Lite_Agent said:
Public demonstration, I'll give you that. But we've known about the name for a while already > http://krsw.5ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1510301191/

I guess "we" is a pretty exclusive group. widely known or even discussed, this isnt

eseqko · Mar 30, 2018

Lite_Agent said:
That's pretty old news, actually. The infamous Vroom in the night sky uses that engine, irrc. Sumiko Gurashi on Switch uses it too, the demo is how some of us heard about it.

Well there are some elements in both games that could be used in an interesting way, but yeah not the best examples to put out there if they really want the engine to be taken seriously

Ganado · Mar 30, 2018

Pretty stupid of smaller devs to use this since it means you're locked to the Switch. Unity is probably the smarter alternative.

Nemesis Warlock · Mar 30, 2018

How do you even get access to the engine?

fiendcode · Mar 30, 2018

https://pokeacer.xyz/wii/pdf/Wii Tools NintendoWare Overview.pdf

Herb Alpert · Mar 30, 2018

Ganado said:
Pretty stupid of smaller devs to use this since it means you're locked to the Switch. Unity is probably the smarter alternative.

Phyre does not lock devs to PlayStation, who knows with that

eseqko · Mar 30, 2018

Ganado said:
Pretty stupid of smaller devs to use this since it means you're locked to the Switch. Unity is probably the smarter alternative.

I personally don't think there is a "Steam exodus" but if I ran this part of Nintendo, I would position the use of the engine as "Hey, look indie devs, we have a very healthy environment on our digital front, make a game using our engine and we will highlight your game as a featured news article that gets beamed to all Switches, you'll be highlighted on a Nintendo Indie Showcase and we'll only take a 15% cut of sales instead of the industry standard 20%."

Vrrrrrooom and this other cute Mario Party clone just aren't the caliber of game I'd let this middleware engine be promoted as what the engine is capable of doing though.

Thorsten · Mar 30, 2018

Awesome :)

Sylverstone · Mar 30, 2018

Comic Obsessed said:
Well hell.

"bad games using an engine ≠ the engine is bad"

Meffer · Mar 30, 2018

Sylverstone said:
"bad games using an engine ≠ the engine is bad"

Exactly, there's plenty of shit games that use good engines.

Dekuman · Mar 30, 2018

I guess people who really hated the Switch bezel is stuck with having one

TwinsUltra64 · Mar 30, 2018

I would love a game with this character.

Deleted member 36622 · Mar 30, 2018

eseqko said:
Well there are some elements in both games that could be used in an interesting way, but yeah not the best examples to put out there if they really want the engine to be taken seriously

Sumikko Gurashi is a decent party game actually, Vroom in the Night Sky is pretty bad, looks more like a tech demo than a game, but i've heard it has a good use of HD Rumble.

TheMoon · Mar 30, 2018

"NintendoWare" is what they used to build Nintendo Land (see credits) way back when. I'd say it's safe to assume this is a current evolution of that foundation.

before that, it was also this: https://www.gamespot.com/forums/nintendo-fan-club-1000001/nintendo-ware-revealed-25442411/
tool for devs to emulate Wii/3DS on PC to test their games

mindatlarge · Mar 30, 2018

ILikeFeet said:
I guess "we" is a pretty exclusive group. widely known or even discussed, this isnt

Yeah, I consider myself pretty in the know and I had never heard of this. Thanks for giving it some attention.

TheMoon · Mar 30, 2018

Muskieratboi said:
How do you even get access to the engine?

signing up on their dev site would be a good start.

Zedelima · Mar 30, 2018

felipepl said:
So this is probably the engine powering Odyssey, or BotW, or MK8/ARMS?
Edit: or a "light" version of it?

Nintendo will never release those

DeuceGamer · Mar 30, 2018

Would be a good idea for them to have an engine that is custom made to get the most out of Switch available, especially for some of the developers in their stable that typically worked on handheld titles. May help them make the transition to HD development easier.

Jackano · Mar 30, 2018

This sound pretty awful. Why will a studio want to use a proprietary engine provided by Nintendo in a world where every game needs to be released multiplatform.
One of the key elements of Switch success with 3rd parties was on the contrary the fact popular engines as UE and Unity are working with Switch.
Web Framework for Wii U was a better idea as it offered an app encapsulation for developers who use other technologies to makes games. But afaik they scrapped it because they scrapped everything's Wii U bc they made so many poor design choices for the system that lead it to failure. Just like after the Gamecube.

Hero of Legend · Mar 30, 2018

Jackano said:
This sound pretty awful. Why will a studio want to use a proprietary engine provided by Nintendo in a world where every game needs to be released multiplatform.
One of the key elements of Switch success with 3rd parties was on the contrary the fact popular engines as UE and Unity are working with Switch.
Web Framework for Wii U was a better idea as it offered an app encapsulation for developers who use other technologies to makes games. But afaik they scrapped it because they scrapped everything's Wii U bc they made so many poor design choices for the system that lead it to failure. Just like after the Gamecube.

Maybe because some might want to make Switch-exclusive games?

Amiibola · Mar 30, 2018

Jackano said:
This sound pretty awful. Why will a studio want to use a proprietary engine provided by Nintendo in a world where every game needs to be released multiplatform.
One of the key elements of Switch success with 3rd parties was on the contrary the fact popular engines as UE and Unity are working with Switch.
Web Framework for Wii U was a better idea as it offered an app encapsulation for developers who use other technologies to makes games. But afaik they scrapped it because they scrapped everything's Wii U bc they made so many poor design choices for the system that lead it to failure. Just like after the Gamecube.

Or maybe, just having more options is good for developers don't you think?

Niceguydan8 · Mar 30, 2018

Jackano said:
This sound pretty awful. Why will a studio want to use a proprietary engine provided by Nintendo in a world where every game needs to be released multiplatform.
One of the key elements of Switch success with 3rd parties was on the contrary the fact popular engines as UE and Unity are working with Switch.
Web Framework for Wii U was a better idea as it offered an app encapsulation for developers who use other technologies to makes games. But afaik they scrapped it because they scrapped everything's Wii U bc they made so many poor design choices for the system that lead it to failure. Just like after the Gamecube.

If every game needs to be released for every platform, how come platform exclusive games exist?

Ganado · Mar 30, 2018

Herb Alpert said:
Phyre does not lock devs to PlayStation, who knows with that

You are right, I thought it said that it wasn't multiplatform but now I can't see anything to back it up.

ILikeFeet · Mar 30, 2018

Ganado said:
You are right, I thought it said that it wasn't multiplatform but now I can't see anything to back it up.

Phyre Engine isn't multiplatform (save for PC). You just aren't locked to Playstation, but you have to do the porting yourself

badcrumble · Mar 30, 2018

Generally a smart hedge for Nintendo (any platform holder should offer as much of the toolkit chain as possible so they're not dependent on anyone else, while still offering great support to third parties who want to offer their own version of any part of that chain), but I think their best bet would be cultivating a strong relationship with Epic to make sure the Switch is a first-class citizen as far as UE4 optimization is concerned ('optimization' being the key word there - obviously more powerful hardware will be able to do things the Switch can't, but Nintendo should make sure that crossplatform ports to Switch are as easy as possible).

Trace · Mar 30, 2018

Muskieratboi said:
How do you even get access to the engine?

Be a Switch dev and have access to the SDK.

Jackano · Mar 30, 2018

Hero of Legend said:
Maybe because some might want to make Switch-exclusive games?

That's another question, they may want that but it's not related to the choosing of a game engine.

Amiibola said:
Or maybe, just having more options is good for developers don't you think?

That's what I said in my previous post with the Web framework, Bezel just doesn't seems to add something to what other existing engines does, bare it's free but you're tied to Nintendo. This doesn't sound like rewarding the effort.

Plus, Nintendo seems to lock out indie devs without previous released games for the sake of curating their library.
So if by chance you've the go for being a Switch dev, it means you already have a game, but certainly not on Bezel because you need to be registered first. Doesn't make any sense from an indie perspective to me.

Hermii · Mar 30, 2018

So does it run on competitors platforms and pc? If not I don't see it being widely used.

Edit: Seriously if they make it run on everything but gives favorable terms to the switch version like timed exclusivity etc is the only hope for this engine.

Emperor Ham · Mar 30, 2018

Engine looks like it's the successor to the Nintendoland engine.

Pokemaniac · Mar 30, 2018

I noticed this in one of the Switch demos I got last night and was perplexed by how little info I could find on the Internet.

I wonder how much this shares with Nintendo's internal tools.

fiendcode · Apr 1, 2018

TheMoon said:
"NintendoWare" is what they used to build Nintendo Land (see credits) way back when. I'd say it's safe to assume this is a current evolution of that foundation.

before that, it was also this: https://www.gamespot.com/forums/nintendo-fan-club-1000001/nintendo-ware-revealed-25442411/
tool for devs to emulate Wii/3DS on PC to test their games

There's been NintendoWare solutions for Wii (RVL), 3DS (CTR) and Wii U (WUP). They're a development framework (collection of tools and libraries), but it looks like Bezel (Switch) is the first full game engine.

The first NintendoWare game ever was Wii Sports (2006) and the first 3rd party game was Square Enix's FFCC My Life as a King (2008).

ggx2ac · Apr 1, 2018

Google searching the engine lead to finding a trademark.

https://www.trademarkia.com/au/trademark-1881252.htm

Trivia:

On Tuesday, May 16, 2017, an australia trademark registration was filed for Nintendo Ware Bezel Engine by Nintendo Co. Ltd. 11-1 Hokotate-cho Kamitoba,, Minami-ku, Kyoto 601-8501. The Australia IP office has given the trademark application number of1881252. The current status of this trademark filing is Registered/Protected. The correspondent listed for Nintendo Ware Bezel Engine is Refer to WIPO Address for Correspondence of , , XX The Nintendo Ware Bezel Engine trademark is filed in the category of Computer & Software Products & Electrical & Scientific Products .

Word Mark: Nintendo Ware Bezel Engine

Current Status:
Registered/Protected

Application Number: 1881252

Filing Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Registration Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Type of Mark:
Word - Trade Mark has logo as a Word

Publication Country: AUSTRALIA

Publication Registration: Thursday, March 08, 2018

Last Applicant/Owner:
NINTENDO CO. LTD.
11-1 Hokotate-cho Kamitoba,
Minami-ku
Kyoto 601-8501

Nintendo Ware Bezel Engine Australia Trademark Information
Programs for consumer video game apparatus; electronic storage media recorded with programs for consumer video game apparatus; downloadable or installable programs and software applications for consumer video game apparatus; programs for handheld electronic game apparatus; electronic storage media recorded with programs for handheld electronic game apparatus; downloadable or installable programs and software applications for handheld electronic game apparatus; programs for arcade video game machines; electronic storage media recorded with programs for arcade video game machines; downloadable or installable programs and software applications for arcade video game machines; computer programs; electronic storage media recorded with programs for computers; downloadable or installable programs and software applications for computers; programs for smartphones; electronic storage media recorded with programs for smartphones; downloadable or installable programs and software applications for smartphones; audio recorded compact discs; downloadable music files; downloadable image files; electronic publications, downloadable; cases for smartphones

Although the trademark filing was submitted on May 16th, 2017 in Australia. The trademark registration didn't become public until March 8th, 2018.

I've went to look through the USPTO and haven't found any Bezel Engine trademark there yet for the US trademark.

Just That Simple · Apr 3, 2018

Sylverstone said:
"bad games using an engine ≠ the engine is bad"

Reminds me of people complaining that Kingdom Hearts 3 would be all "brown and grey" when it was announced it was moving engine to Unreal 4.

Nintendo Is Creating Middleware Tools Called Bezel Engine for Developers

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