REX Project: Capcom Wants AI to Playtest Its Games With the Next-Gen Re Engine

Capcom is working on AI that can actually play its games and judge what it sees and hears. The company is developing the system for game testing, with the aim of having AI handle some of the work involved in quality-checking increasingly complicated games made with its proprietary RE Engine.

That system is part of REX (“RE neXt”), Capcom’s recently announced long-term project to evolve RE Engine for the next generation. Alongside autonomous playtesting, the company is also rebuilding parts of its development tools and workflows so AI can work with the engine more directly.

Capcom Is Teaching AI to Play Its Games

Capcom presented the latest REX developments at CAPCOM Open Conference RE:2026 on October 2. Programmer Satoshi Ishida discussed the problems the project is trying to solve as games become larger and development teams become more diverse (via gamebiz). The company also pointed to the growing difficulty of testing AAA games, where huge environments, large amounts of content, and different ways of playing can create an enormous number of test cases.

One of the systems being developed in response to those problems is an autonomous play AI for QA. It can reportedly assess a game through its screen and audio, giving it information similar to what a human player would have while playing. The system is being developed specifically for QA, with the aim of catching issues that might otherwise require testers to go through huge numbers of gameplay scenarios themselves (via inside-games).

The system itself uses two layers based on the human dual-process model. One handles fast, reactive decisions, while another handles more deliberate reasoning, allowing the AI to spend more time working through a situation before deciding what to do next.

We should note here that REX is not being developed as a completely separate engine. Through this new project, Capcom plans to add new technologies to its proprietary RE Engine over time, covering areas such as performance, development tools, workflows, and QA. The broader goal, according to the Japanese gaming giant, is to make the engine easier for both developers and AI systems to work with. The timing is quite fitting, given Capcom’s ambitious plans for its older IPs.

REX Is Also Changing How Developers Work With RE Engine

Reaching for the moon, indeed. | Credit: Capcom

The playtesting system is only one part of REX. The company is developing several technologies around RE Engine, including RE for data processing, RE for development interfaces, RE for logging, RE for workflows, and RE for runtime performance. RE also forms the basis for REAssistAI, which can use an LLM and RAG to work with development knowledge.

That said, Capcom has already been automating parts of its quality control process for quite some time now. Its 2024 Integrated Report says the Technical Research Division built an automated system that can “play and bug-check games on behalf of people,” with versions adapted for individual titles. At the time, the company said this allows its QA staff to spend more time on work that cannot be automated, such as tuning game difficulty and progression.

The company has also said it plans to use generative AI to improve efficiency and productivity during development, including areas such as graphics, sound, and programming. At the same time, it said earlier this year that it would not implement AI-generated assets into its game content.

Would you trust an AI to catch problems in a game during development, or would you still want human testers checking everything? Let us know in the comments below!