Criterion Software · 1993 · 1990s · C / C++
Nicknamed "Sony's DirectX" — the middleware that made the PlayStation 2 programmable by mortals, and quietly powered Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas and Burnout.
RenderWare was created by the British developer Criterion, first released in 1993 as a 3D API and rendering engine, and grew into a full middleware suite with low-level modules for rendering, physics, audio and AI, all extensible through plug-ins. Its commercial importance, however, is almost entirely about one machine. The PlayStation 2 was notoriously difficult to program — an idiosyncratic architecture with vector units that rewarded deep, painful, platform-specific expertise — and RenderWare was the off-the-shelf answer. It abstracted the pain away, and it did so well enough that it was frequently described as "Sony's DirectX", a role Sony itself had conspicuously failed to fill. The consequences are hiding in plain sight in the era's biggest games. RenderWare was licensed over 200 times, and its licensees included Rockstar: Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas all run on it. So does the Burnout series, which leaned on RenderWare's physics and graphics modules for its crash deformation and particle work. The defining open-world games of the PS2 generation were built on British middleware rather than on in-house technology, which is a large part of why they arrived when they did. In July 2004, Electronic Arts acquired Criterion Software and Criterion Games from Canon — buying, among other things, the engine on which its principal competitor's biggest franchise was running.