The partnership between Sony and Epic Games continues to grow after the reveal of Unreal Engine 5 was showcased with demo running on PlayStation 5 earlier this year. Today, Epic Games and Sony have announced that Sony has invested $250 million in the company acquiring a minority interest. The investment cements an already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces the shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services.
Chairman, President, and CEO of Sony Kenichiro Yoshida said, “Epic’s powerful technology in areas such as graphics places them in the forefront of game engine development with Unreal Engine and other innovations. There’s no better example of this than the revolutionary entertainment experience, Fortnite. Through our investment, we will explore opportunities for further collaboration with Epic to delight and bring value to consumers and the industry at large, not only in games, but also across the rapidly evolving digital entertainment landscape.”
Sony and Epic have been working together closely during the development of the PlayStation 5 so that Epic’s development toolsets for developers are optimized for the hardware that the software will be running on. Epic Games CEO said ” Sony has really done an awesome job of architecting a great system. The storage architecture on the PS5 is far ahead of anything you can buy on anything on PC for any amount of money right. It’s going to help drive future PCs.
Speaking about the new arrangement between the two companies, Sweeny said, “Sony and Epic have both built businesses at the intersection of creativity and technology, and we share a vision of real-time 3D social experiences leading to a convergence of gaming, film, and music. Together we strive to build an even more open and accessible digital ecosystem for all consumers and content creators alike.”