Epic Games, the developer of the popular survival game Fortnite, secured an additional $2 Billion in funding from Japanese Console and game developer Sony and Danish Company Kirkbi, the investment group behind Lego, to build a "metaverse".
Epic Games CEO Says That Metaverse Will Allow 'Immersive Experiences'
It seems that many companies are racing toward creating a fully-functional Metaverse. At this point, no one still knows what a Metaverse will look like, or at least what the exact definition of a Metaverse even is. Some speculate that this will look like the virtual reality world in the film Ready Player One.
In the film, set in a dystopian future, people log into a virtual reality realm called The OASIS or Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation to escape their harsh and gloomy existence. In The OASIS, people get to participate in events and go on adventures.
Epic Games said on Monday that it has secured $1 Billion in investments each from Sony and Krikbi. With this deal, Kirkbi will own a 3% stake of the company, while Sony will own 4.9 %. The deal now values Epic at $31.5 Billion.
Lego and Epic came up with an announcement last week, where the two gaming companies have formed "a long-term partnership" to create a metaverse for children. There were only a few details as to how this plan would be funded. According to Epic Games CEO and founder Tim Sweeney, "This investment will accelerate our work to build the metaverse and create spaces where players can have fun with friends, brands can build creative and immersive experiences and creators can build a community and thrive."
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Gaming Companies Race Towards Creating Metaverses
Many gaming companies have joined the race in creating a Metaverse. In January 2022, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for $75 Billion to get a head start in creating a metaverse of their own. While this concept is probably vague and overhyped, gaming experts claim that this will shape how people socialize, work, recreate, and pay in the future.
Sony had already funded Epic Games with $250 Million in July 2020, and another $200 Million in April 2021. This makes Sony's total amount of investments $1.45 Billion. According to Kenichiro Yoshida, CEO of Sony, "We are also confident that Epic's expertise, including their powerful game engine, combined with Sony's technologies, will accelerate our various efforts such as the development of new digital fan experiences in sports and our virtual production initiatives,"
Fortnite is considered by many as a Metaverse in itself, a virtual world where people can create avatars of themselves, interact and play games with each other, and move around virtual environments. Fortnite uses the Unreal Engine in developing the game.
But latency issues make it easy to recognize the environment as simply a game and cannot be taken seriously to replace real-life interactions. If we are to create a fully-virtual world to simulate the present one that we live in, the current technology still has a lot to go.
Sweeney, who is still hands-on in doing coding for his company, believes that the metaverse could be a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity and that the years to come are critical for major gaming companies such as Microsoft, Epic, and Meta to secure their first billion users.
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Story posted on GameNGuide
Written by Fred Layno
