Dead or Alive 4... for the XB360?

[A Black Falcon]

What on earth are you talking about.

Game engines... you know, the thing that powers games... and how often games use other games' engines... like with Heretic or Hexen on Doom, Hexen II or on Quake, Anachronox on Quake II, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force (& Star Trek Elite Force 2) on Quake III, Jedi Knight II or III on Quake III, etc, etc... (or for some upcoming games, Prey on Doom III, Duke Nukem Forever on Unreal Tournament, Quake IV on Doom III (I think), etc, etc... or the Build engine, which ran a long list of games from Redneck Rampage and Witchaven to Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior... you could expand this beyond FPSes, of course. For instance, the Infinity Engine runs Baldur's Gate I and II, Icewind Dale I and II, and Torment.

DJ seems to be saying that he thinks that games usually use original engines. I don't deny that, but definitely believe that lots of games use pre-existing engines. It's just so much quicker and easier to use a pre-existing engine, when compared to making something completely from scratch, that lots of developers take that path. Especially in genres like FPSes.

Oh, and it's really, really common for sequels to use improved versions of the engine created for the previous game.

Oh yeah... one last thing. DJ, you are absolutely right about one thing: I don't think we'll see Nintendo liscencing engines anytime soon.