So why did SE license UE3?

[ozonez]

The white engine is now cross platform as well and is looking a lot better then UE3.

[Neal]

BECAUSE FINAL FANTASY XIII IS GOING ON THE XBOX 360!!1

They've probably just finished it, or it's not optimised for the 360 yet or something. They said they'd have to vary memory and processing speeds etc. You have to have the engine before you start making the game, so maybe they wanted to make The Last Remnant quickly.

[Kitmitsu]

Possibly because they wanted The Last Remnant out this year and they couldn't afford to wait for the White Engine to be complete.

EDIT: Damn you answer quick Nero :/

[Hakumi]

Final Fantasy XIII will not be on Xbox 360, for XIII they used the White Engine which is now renamed Crystals Tools. I believe the reason for Square using UE3, was so they could produce a game quickly that would easily work on both the PS3 and 360. So far the only game they have produced with it is The Last Remnant.

It all comes down to developement cost. And games cost a lot more this generation. Square developed Crystal Tools as their primary system, but they developed it along side Final Fantasy XIII, so that didn't leave a lot of room or time for other games they wanted to also develope seperately. Because of this, they have tried to adapt more third party tools to help with game creation. This is why they are using the UE3 to develope Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King for Wii.

I think eventually they will be able to adapt and add to Crystal Tools for mulitplatform use, but at the time it was designed only to work for the PS3. It takes them about 2-5 years to fully design and develope a game, so I would expect to see most of their future games to use the Crystal Tools engine in place of UE3.

In short, UE3 was a quick fix for them while they finished up Crystal Tools.