Epic Games showcased its business models, trends, and programming language at its recent State of Unreal event. The CEO, Tim Sweeney, also discussed the hype cycle around the metaverse and demonstrated how to navigate the details of Unreal’s shading system. They unveiled Unreal Engine 5.2 and announced that 40% of net revenue from Fortnite would go to creators. Sweeney and his team showed off the tech behind games like Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and the Metahuman Animator, a tool used to create realistic animations for games and films. Following the event, VentureBeat interviewed Sweeney and Sax Persson, executive vice president of Epic Games, on topics including the open metaverse, defeating walled gardens, and creating open standards. Sweeney discussed the building blocks required for the metaverse, such as technical interoperability at the user level, economic interoperability, governing bodies, and quality standards. Persson noted that social graphs would benefit from overlapping and cross-play between platforms. Epic Games is betting on openness and allowing creators to feel like part of the platform.
Epic’s Tim Sweeney sees the metaverse as the next big thing, with Unreal Engine at the forefront. #FutureTech #Metaverse
