Capcom programmer Satoshi Ishida has detailed upcoming improvements to the company’s proprietary RE Engine during the Capcom Open Conference RE: 2026.
As reported by GameBiz (thanks, VGC), Capcom’s ‘REX’ initiative is designed to overcome modern development challenges that make the process so lengthy, including improvements to tools, QA, efficiency, and more.
One intriguing thing to note is that it seems to be going all-in on AI and is keen to evolve the RE Engine into an ‘AI-generation game engine’ [Update: as in ‘a game engine for the AI generation’]. The goal is for the REX project to utilise the most common programming language in order to improve “readability and comprehension for AI”. This will then allow AI to automatically create programs or even perform a play test to immediately identify bugs.
To further this goal, Capcom has also introduced some of its technologies, such as RE:Dox and RE:Log, to the public via open source, primarily as a way to train its AI.
This probably all sounds pretty alarming, but Capcom’s VP of game development and AI solutions has previously stated that the company will not be using AI technology to create art, but to instead “unlock the potential for creators”.
It’s difficult to trust what companies say these days when it comes to AI, particularly after the recent Level-5 fiasco, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that many large studios are already implementing the technology in some way or another. The question is how far they’re willing to take it.