Sony invests $250 million into Epic Games

[Polycount]

In brief: Epic Games has been a successful company for years, but Fortnite's explosive popularity and the growth of the Epic Games Store has allowed it to reach new financial heights. Now, Sony is looking to ride the wave of Epic's success with a minority stake in the company.

To be more specific, Sony has invested $250 million into Epic Games, giving it a sizable -- but not controlling -- interest in the latter's operations.

This investment probably won't surprise anyone who has been following the relationship between Sony and Epic lately. Sony has brought many of its previously PS4-exclusive games to PC over the past several months as timed Epic Games Store exclusives, and it will most likely continue to do so moving forward.

The companies have also been working together on the hardware and engine side of the gaming world. Indeed, Epic's most recent Unreal Engine 5 tech demo was showcased and optimized to run on a PlayStation 5 instead of an Xbox Series X or a PC (which isn't, of course, to say the demo could not run well on those platforms too).

Sony views its recent investment as a chance to deepen this collaboration with Epic and bring "value" to consumers across the entire entertainment industry. Epic hopes Sony's new stake in the company will lead to a more "open and accessible" digital ecosystem for both "consumers and content creators alike."

Masthead credit: charnsitr via Shutterstock

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https://www.techspot.com/news/85948-sony-invests-250-million-epic-games.html

 

[Puiu]

Most likely a push to make the engine better for PS and to get games out sooner for it.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Curious. MS appears to be blending it’s PC and Xbox gaming platforms together. But Sony appears to be using a third party to get its games to the PC?

Oh well, that’s up to them to work out. I just hope I can get some of those juicy PlayStation exclusives on my PC.

 

[Irata]

Most likely a push to make the engine better for PS and to get games out sooner for it.

On the plus side that should also make it run better with AMD hardware on PC.

 

[dangh]

It's rather to ensure third party titles would work perfectly on ps5 and use its all features out of the box.

 

[m4a4]

Ha, called it. It seemed a bit too convenient and advertisement-like showing that PS5 UE5 demo as they did.

But in any case, the tech will permeate to PC, so I'm all for that lol

 

[Lounds]

I wonder if Epic games are adding tools specific for PS5 in mind to UE5.

 

[Puiu]

I wonder if Epic games are adding tools specific for PS5 in mind to UE5.

They will 100% do that.

 

[winjer]

This explains why Tim Sweeney and the Epic staff was constantly talking about how great the PS5 is.