Oxide Games is a new studio of strategy veterans, with a new 64-bit engine

Composed largely of former Civilization V developers and Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell, Oxide Games' new 64-bit engine is called Nitrous and is being built for use on the PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4.

The engine is being designed from the ground up to take advantage of multi-core technology, with a unique "Simultaneous Work and Rendering Model" which "renders calls automatically from whichever CPU core is most available" at the time.

According to Tim Kipp, one of the studio's co-founder and a former engine designer for Firaxis said this will allow Nitrous to "render epic numbers of units and light sources on a screen".

Apparently a "number of developers" have already committed to using the engine for their upcoming titles, although none are listed. Given that Stardock has provided the seed money for the engine's development however, it makes sense that the studio's upcoming 64-bit only title Galactic Civilizations 3 probably uses the new engine.

Derek Paxton, the vice president of Stardock Entertainment said that there are "enormous opportunities" for developers using a "64-bit multicore engine" and that "With Nitrous, we’ll be able to have visuals and performance with a fidelity never seen before in a strategy game."

Mike Burrows, a principal engineer at Intel said the engine's new tasking system would translate into "an unprecedented 10,000 interactive units".

Thanks, Game Informer.