Epic Games has wrapped off its Unreal Engine 5, showing in a demo video how the game engine behind Fortnite will be able to generate outstanding realistic graphics in real-time on next-generation consoles like the PlayStation 5, high-end PCs, and even mobile devices.
Unreal Engine 5 will debut in 2021, and it will be one of the tools that will enable for the entire game industry to take a step upward in graphics quality, said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweenay in an interview with GamesBeat.
Sweeney emphasized that Epic Games worked closely with Sony on the PlayStation 5 so that games can take full advantage of the next-generation hardware. But he also said that Unreal Engine 5 is designed to make any game run anywhere. Game designers can use it to create their games, and Epic does the hard work of translating it so that it can run on everything, from mobile devices to next-generation consoles to high-end PCs.
Sweeney said that Epic Games is using Unreal Engine 4 to adapt Fortnite to run on both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X when those consoles debut late this year. That’s important for both consoles, as Fortnite has more than 350 million users across seven different platforms. Over time, Epic Games will migrate Fortnite over to the Unreal Engine 5.
