Hit PSP Dev Ready At Dawn Releasing Self-Titled Engine

Though they also handled the recent Wii port of Okami, Ready at Dawn Studios is best known for being one of the only developers to really conquer the PSP and produce two memorable games for the handheld -- Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olyumpus. Now the company would like to be known for something else: helping other companies create games with a brand new middleware engine.

Speaking to Gamasutra (via Joystiq), Ready at Dawn co-founder Didier Malenfant explained how current middleware engines don't do the work they should: "There are a lot of licenses out there, but all you hear is horror stories about how it's hampered development, rather than made it easier." Malenfant and company hope to change that by offering a more complete package than most middleware engines.

In addition to the game engine itself, the Ready at Dawn engine package will include fully integrated physics, sound tools, UI tools, and more, rather than forcing developers to search for all of that in addition to their middleware engine and hope it all works together. "What you have is a ready to use package optimized to work together and deliver the best features and performance for your game," Malenfant explained.

Unsurprisingly, The Ready at Dawn engine was originally planned for the PSP but now scales up to the 360 and PS3 as well. Malenfant said there's also the possibility for the tools to eventually support the Wii and iPhone. A select group of developers will get a chance to test the new engine for themselves when it enters private beta in a couple weeks, with a release announcement expected by the end of the year.

If this engine can at all help developers produce games on the quality of Ready at Dawn's portfolio, we're all for it. Now let's just hope the titular studio is working on a new game of their own to showcase its abilities.