Sony invests $250 million in ‘Fortnite’ developer Epic Games

Sony has invested a $250 million in Epic Games, giving them a minority stake. The two companies announced it on Thursday. This deal means Sony gets a 1.4 percent interest in the game development studio and publisher. And also with this new money Epic Games has now a valuation of $17.86 billion, reports VentureBeat.

As we can see the bond between Sony and Epic Games keeps growing stronger after Epic decided to showcase the Unreal Engine 5 on PlaySAs we can see the bond between Sony and Epic Games keeps growing stronger after Epic decided to showcase the Unreal Engine 5 on PlayStation 5 in May. Which was one of the early examples that we saw of the power of PS5’s hardware and the next-gen of gaming that it promises. This deal, enables Sony and Epic to broaden their collaboration, with Sony’s portfolio of entertainment assets and technology and Epic’s social entertainment platform and digital ecosystem, to create unique experiences for consumers and creators. Epic confirmed to VentureBeat that the deal doesn’t mean Epic titles will now be exclusive to Sony consoles — the studio will still be able to publish games on other platforms.

If you remember Epic was also played a key role in getting Sony on board with cross-play multiplayer, enabling it for Fortnite in September 2018. Before then, if you had a Fortnite account, players could play with each other and access progress and skins across Nintendo Switch and Xbox One only, but Sony didn’t allow cross-play on PS4. Since then, many more PS4 games have added cross-play multiplayer features. Also according to a press release Sony and Epic may want to create more Fortnite-like virtual multimedia experiences, like the hugely popular in-game Travis Scott concert tour which drew more than 27 million people.

What this investment is for

Epic Games didn’t say what it would use the money for. But with this collaboration, we can hope to see Unreal Engine making its way into Epic Games didn’t say what they are going to do with the money. But with this collaboration, we can hope to see Unreal Engine making its way into Sony’s films and other visual sectors too (Unreal Engine has already provided live visual effects to the Star Wars series “The Mandalorian”) or company would continue to make acquisitions, invest in its Epic Games Store, expand Fortnite, and drive toward the creation of the Metaverse.