According to the head of Epic Games, the Unreal Engine and Fortnite will be intertwined, and the company’s previously announced mega-deal with one of the largest media companies in the world will play a role in that…

In an interview with The Verge, Sweeney explained his plans for the rest of the decade and how he had to lay off 16% of his staff to do so. Sweeney continues to think in terms of a metaverse, and a shared asset and marketplace between Unreal Engine games/initiatives and Fortnite. A Unreal “persistent universe” has also been mentioned, and this is where the Disney deal comes into play, so the mouse empire will also play a big role in the company’s future…

“Last year, before Unreal Fest, we were spending about a billion dollars a year more than we were making. The real power will come when we bring these two worlds [Unreal Engine and Fortnite] together, so that we have all the power of our high-end game engine combined with the ease of use that we put together in [Unreal Editor for Fortnite]. That’s going to take several years. And when that process is complete, that will be Unreal Engine 6. We announced that we’re working with Disney to build a Disney ecosystem that’s theirs, but it’s fully interoperable with the Fortnite ecosystem. And what we’re talking about with Unreal Engine 6 is the technology foundation that’s going to make that possible for everybody,” Sweeney said.

The Epic boss wants developers to build an app on Unreal Engine and then release it as a standalone game for any platform, and their work could be placed in another UE game or even Fortnite. This doesn’t sound as far-fetched as what, say, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson said (he mentioned 3 billion AI-empowered developers), nor as ridiculous as Ubisoft’s feeble attempts to sell NFTs…

Source: PCGamer, The Verge