Gaming IndustryFortniteEpic boss Tim Sweeney says Unreal Engine 6 will be a ‘metaverse’ joining Fortnite and other Unreal games, including an upcoming ‘persistent universe’ in development with DisneyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Gaming IndustryFortniteEpic boss Tim Sweeney says Unreal Engine 6 will be a ‘metaverse’ joining Fortnite and other Unreal games, including an upcoming ‘persistent universe’ in development with DisneyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Epic Games)
“Last year, before Unreal Fest, we were spending about a billion dollars a year more than we were making,” Sweeney said. That’s since receded to just “a bit” more than Epic earns in revenue. For perspective,Forbesestimated the company’s revenue to be north of $6 billion in 2022, while the Epic Game Store self-reported $950 million in sales in its2023 year in review. Like Microsoft, The Embracer Group, and many other publishers, Epic balled out in the go-go years of the pandemic andNFTsbefore having to tighten its belt amid the current industry contraction.
But the lofty ambitions remain, with a focus on better linking the Unreal Engine proper with the more approachable Unreal Editor For Fortnite, the evolved form of the Fortnite Creative tools mapmakers have been putting to great effect in all manner of custom modes and maps. “The real power will come when we bring these two worlds together so we have the entire power of our high-end game engine merged with the ease of use that we put together in [Unreal Editor for Fortnite],” said Sweeney. “That’s going to take several years. And when that process is complete, that will be Unreal Engine 6.”
“And what we’re talking about with Unreal Engine 6 is the technology base that’s going to make that possible for everybody.”
And I gotta say, that vision doesn’t appeal to me any more now than it did at the height of metaverse mania. But while there are a ton of serious impediments to making it happen, these aren’t thebong rip musings about 3 billion AI-empowered developersfrom EA CEO Andrew Wilson orUbisoft’s flaccid attemptsto sell Ghost Recon NFTs—Epic has the resources and industry ubiquity to at least get this initiative off the ground.
(Image credit: Epic)
That huge Fortnite war chest immediately springs to mind—this is a company engaging in a multi-front legal war with the likes of Google and Apple without breaking a sweat—but even more critical is that Unreal Engine iseverywhere. UE3 already felt like a juggernaut 15 years ago, but Unreal Engine 5 has increasingly found a place in Hollywood as a tool for creating CGI in movies. Unreal is also seeing a lot of adoption in the indie and double-A space while some major developers known for their in-house engines have dropped those tools in favor of Epic’s middleware—CD Projektand nowHalo Studios(formerly 343 Industries) are the ones that most surprised me.
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At the same time, you could drive a truck through the figurative gap between “I’m using Unreal Engine” and “I’m an enthusiastic partner in the Unreal metaverse.” There are also other, competing visions for what the next five to ten years of gaming will look like, and the big elephant in the room here is Valve. The Verge quotes Epic EVP Sax Persson as saying “people are not dogmatic about where they play” based on Epic’s own surveys, but has he seen the way people talk about the Epic Store vs. Steam?
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