Sony has spent $250 million in Epic Games, both firms revealed on Thursday. The agreement ensures that Sony has a 1.4 percent stake in the game production business and distributor and giving Epic a value of $17.86 billion.
The press release stated that this investment helps both the company to, “broaden their collaboration across Sony’s leading portfolio of entertainment assets and technology, and Epic’s social entertainment platform and digital ecosystem to create unique experiences for consumers and creators”.
There is also a line in the press release that indicates that Sony and Epic will choose to develop more Fortnite-like immersive gaming interactions. Epic Games CEO states, “We share a vision of real-time 3D social experiences leading to a convergence of gaming, film, and music,”
The contract doesn’t mean all Epic projects will only be limited to Sony consoles — the company will still be willing to launch games on other devices, Epic clarified to Venture Beat.
Sony With Epic:
Sony and Epic have been working closely together for years, and Sweeney named Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation 5 console a “remarkably designed tool” and lauded the revolutionary solid state drive. Epic used the spectacular PlayStation 5 prototype to show off the features of the new iteration of the Unreal Engine 5 game system back in May.
In the period, Sweeney also claimed that Epic had been collaborating closely with Sony to improve the next-gen data model of the system, adding, “We’ve been collaborating very next to Sony for such a long time on storage.”
Epic was also influential in bringing Sony on board with a online cross-player, allowing Fortnite to do so in September 2018. After this, if you have a Fortnite account, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One players will be able to compete with each other and gain advancement and skins through both platforms, but PlayStation will be restricting cross-play on PS4. After then, a number of PS4 titles have incorporated cooperative cross-play functionality.
Ending:
Epic has a tremendous outside partner in Tencent, which spent $330 million in 2012 to buy a 40% interest in the company. Epic ‘s value has risen dramatically since then, fuelled in large part by the tremendous and continued popularity of Fortnite, which received $400 million in sales in April of this year alone, notes VentureBeat.
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