Luminous Engine lives on!
Square Enix's Engine Development Division which is headed by the Luminous Productions head and Luminous Engine lead programmer Takeshi Aramaki has stated in August 2024 and earlier in 2025 that he is director of Square Enix's in house engine right now, according to a presentation by the engine development division they are still currently using Luminous as their in house engine, or rather have updated the engine to a new point where it's now "Square Enix in house engine that evolved from Luminous Engine".
This is part of Square Enix's restructure in 2024, they created an engine development division to help out with any Creative Studios and now have a dedicated in house company wide engine focus.
The main reason other divisions didn't use lumbar before was simply lack of documentation, that is now being addressed.
We'll likely see SE phase out using Unreal Engine in the coming years with the only games still using UE4/UE5 being games that started development on Unreal Engine prior to April 2024. So FF7R3, KH4 and DQ12 will still have to be Unreal Engine games, but FF17 and other AAA games that began development after the 2024 restructure in all likelihood will be on Luminous Engine/Engine that evolve from Luminous Engine.
This is for the best as Luminous engine games have outperformed any of SE's Unreal engine games in performance, visuals, graphics and made in a fraction of the time as their UE games too.
Square Enix's Engine Development Division which is headed by the Luminous Productions head and Luminous Engine lead programmer Takeshi Aramaki has stated in August 2024 and earlier in 2025 that he is director of Square Enix's in house engine right now, according to a presentation by the engine development division they are still currently using Luminous as their in house engine, or rather have updated the engine to a new point where it's now "Square Enix in house engine that evolved from Luminous Engine".
This is part of Square Enix's restructure in 2024, they created an engine development division to help out with any Creative Studios and now have a dedicated in house company wide engine focus.
The main reason other divisions didn't use lumbar before was simply lack of documentation, that is now being addressed.
We'll likely see SE phase out using Unreal Engine in the coming years with the only games still using UE4/UE5 being games that started development on Unreal Engine prior to April 2024. So FF7R3, KH4 and DQ12 will still have to be Unreal Engine games, but FF17 and other AAA games that began development after the 2024 restructure in all likelihood will be on Luminous Engine/Engine that evolve from Luminous Engine.
This is for the best as Luminous engine games have outperformed any of SE's Unreal engine games in performance, visuals, graphics and made in a fraction of the time as their UE games too.