Sony Just Invested $250 Million in Epic Games, Here’s What it Could Mean for VR and Beyond

Sony Corporation announced today that it will invest $250 million in Epic Games, the company well known for its hit game Fortnite and the Unreal Engine game engine that powers it. Unreal Engine is the second most popular game engine for building VR content, and has powered PSVR games like FarpointMoss,and Firewall: Zero Hour.

Interestingly, the investment in Unreal Engine is being made on behalf of a wholly-owned subsidiary of parent company Sony Corporation rather than by Sony Interactive Entertainment (AKA PlayStation). Whether that’s for legal structure reasons, or because the company plans to leverage its new stake in Epic Games beyond just gaming isn’t clear.

Going Beyond Gaming

While Epic’s Unreal Engine is certainly most relevant to PlayStation and gaming, the engine is increasingly seeing use in non-gaming contexts like visualization and virtual film production, both of which have clear relevance to Sony Pictures (the company’s film division) and Sony Corporation (which focuses on the company’s consumer electronics business).

But it’s clear that the nearer implications of the investment will be on the interactive side of things, of which the company’s PlayStation 4 console is a major platform for Epic’s massively popular game, Fortnite. In recent years the game has broken new ground as a sort of proto-metaverse by hosting interactive events like virtual concerts, film debuts, and more to the game’s tens of millions of active players.

A virtual concert hosted in ‘Fortnite’ drew tens of millions of users last year | Image courtesy PCGamesN

“Epic’s powerful technology in areas such as graphics places them at the forefront of game engine development with Unreal Engine and other innovations. There’s no better example of this than the revolutionary entertainment experience, Fortnite. Through our investment, we will explore opportunities for further collaboration with Epic to delight and bring value to consumers and the industry at large, not only in games, but also across the rapidly evolving digital entertainment landscape,” said Sony Corporation’s CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida.

Notice that Yoshida calls Fortnite a “revolutionary entertainment experience,” rather than a “revolutionary game.” This is a key hint about the company’s future ambitions.

“Sony and Epic have both built businesses at the intersection of creativity and technology, and we share a vision of real-time 3D social experiences leading to a convergence of gaming, film, and music. Together we strive to build an even more open and accessible digital ecosystem for all consumers and content creators alike,” said Epic Game’s CEO Tim Sweeney.

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It’s the “convergence of gaming, film, and music” part which speaks to where the long-term synergies between Sony and Epic lie. Sony is a global player in all three of those spaces presently, and clearly has the vision of a future where these three sectors meld far closer together than ever before. The foundation of that future, from Sony and Epic’s standpoint, appears to be interactivity and real-time rendering.

Unifying One of PlayStation’s Greatest Assets

Image courtesy PlayStation

Another, less lofty synergy between the companies could be that Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) wants to move its first-party game studios away from proprietary in-house game engines and toward Unreal Engine to increase cohesion and leverage game-engine R&D across studios.

SIE’s first-party studios have been increasingly important for PlayStation over the last console generation, having given the company’s console a significant edge thanks to exclusive hit titles like Uncharted 4Horizon: Zero DawnMarvel’s Spider-ManGod of War, and The Last of Us Part 2.

The growing importance of company’s first-party game studios to Sony’s console business was made even more apparent when it was recently announced that the company will rebrand the studio group from Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios to, simply, PlayStation Studios.

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While Sony may well want to leave the studios’ present level of autonomy untouched (including their choice of using different in-house engines), it’s clear how moving the group toward a singular game engine would capitalize on existing investments by allowing studios to much more easily share both engine technology and developer talent. Unifying under a single game engine would mean less replication of game engine R&D as much as developer training and experience.

EA’s Game Engine Case Study

‘Star Wars: Squadrons’, powered by EA’s Frostbite engine, will support VR headsets | Image courtesy Motive

Mega-game publisher Electronic Arts pulled a similar move when it acquired DICE, the studio behind Battlefield, back in 2006. The acquisition not only brought the popular game franchise under EA’s umbrella, but also the studio’s Frostbite game engine. Since then EA has leveraged that acquisition by investing deeply in Frostbite and making it widely used across the company’s studios.

Frostbite now powers many EA-published game franchises like Mass Effect, Madden NFL, FIFA, Need for Speed, and, of course, Battlefield. The engine has even been adapted for use with VR; it will power the upcoming VR-supported Star Wars: Squadrons, and was already used in Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: VR Mission (2016) which was released for PSVR.

Streamlining EA studios with Frostbite as a technological foundation has been a clear success as the company and the engine has been behind some of the most visually ambitious games ever made—Battlefield 5 (2018) being a stunning example.

What It Could Mean for VR

Image courtesy PlayStation

If Sony moves toward making Unreal Engine the engine of choice for PlayStation Studios, it could also impact the company’s VR strategy. Unreal Engine already supports VR development across all major headsets, including PSVR. It has powered PSVR games like of Farpoint (2017)Moss (2018), and Firewall: Zero Point (2018).

While some PlayStation Studios teams have released VR games—like JAPAN Studios’ ASTRO BOT: Rescue Mission (2018) and London Studios’ Blood & Truth (2019)still many of the company’s studios have not.

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While adapting a studio’s in-house game engine for VR rendering isn’t necessarily the hardest part of developing a VR game, building into that engine a full suite of developer tools to meet the specific needs of VR development is a much larger task. Fortunately, it’s something that Epic Games has been doing with Unreal Engine for years. In fact, the company released its own VR game, Robo Recall (2017), which still stands as an impressive example of the engine’s VR prowess.

Streamlining PlayStation Studios with Unreal Engine would mean that all of Sony’s game studios would already be working with a game engine that has fully-featured VR capabilities; that would reduce the friction for the company’s other studios to commit to building VR games.

Unreal Engine on PlayStation 5

‘Lumen in the Land of Nanite’ an Unreal Engine 5 tech-demo that debuted on PS5 hardware | Image courtesy Epic Games

Unreal Engine isn’t just relevant to PlayStation Studios, it’s also relevant to Sony’s upcoming PS5 and its community of third-party developers. Even prior to today’s investment announcement, Sony had already been apparently working in close collaboration with Epic to optimize Unreal Engine for PS5’s new hardware architecture.

The fruit of that work was revealed back in May in an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo specially built to take advantage of PS5’s hardware.

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The demo showed off key new features of the upcoming Unreal Engine 5: advanced lighting thanks to dynamic global illumination and incredible geometric detail with ‘virtualized micropolygon geometry’, which Epic says will allow “film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons” to be imported into Unreal Engine 5 and run in real-time.

Epic says that theses features will be supported in VR content, though it isn’t clear how much they will be limited by VR’s high-performance requirements.

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And we haven’t even really touched on the Epic Game Store, the company’s new digital distribution platform which has brought much needed competition to Steam’s dominance.

Overall, Sony’s investment in Epic is an ambitious move and one which will have nearer-term and decades-long implications for Sony and Epic Games, both of which are deeply intertwined with the VR industry. While Microsoft is only just catching up to the powerhouse of development talent that’s accumulated in PlayStation Studios, this forward-looking move may well keep PlayStation one step ahead of its competition in the next generation.

The post Sony Just Invested $250 Million in Epic Games, Here’s What it Could Mean for VR and Beyond appeared first on Road to VR.

Sony CEO Kaz Hirai Steps Down, Succeeded By Director Kenichiro Yoshida

After six years acting as Sony’s CEO, Kazuo Hirai is stepping down from his post. Taking his place is Director Kenichiro Yoshida. Mr. Hirai proposed the management transition himself to the Sony Nominating Committee, and was later approved by the Sony Board of Directors at a Board meeting.

The new transition will officially come into effect on April 1st 2018, the same date Sony will take on their next mid-range corporate plan under Mr. Yoshida’s management.

Kenichiro Yoshida is of course not to be confused with another known Sony executive, Sony’s Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida.

This follows other changes in Sony’s management. Earlier this month we saw Jim Ryan promoted to Deputy President of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE).

Sony’s new CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has some important words to share following his promotion, and shows his understanding of the responsibility he now holds; “I am very grateful to Kazuo Hirai and the Sony Board for their trust and confidence in appointing me as Sony President and CEO, and at the same time feel a great sense of responsibility in taking on this vitally important role. Together with the outstanding talent we have across the Sony Group, I will aim to build on the business foundations established by Mr. Hirai, and execute further reform measures that enhance our competitiveness as a global enterprise, and enable us to realize long-term profit growth.”

Mr Yoshida continues; “My first priority will be to finalize our next mid-range corporate plan starting in April, together with our immediate business plan for the fiscal year 2018, and then move ahead swiftly with implementation. This is a hugely exciting time at Sony as we look to our future, and together with my management team I intend to determine the best path for us to move forward, and devote my full effort to creating a better Sony that captures the imagination of our many stakeholders around the world.”

Kazuo Hirai is a legendary businessman and shares some heartfelt words on his time with Sony; “Ever since my appointment as President and CEO in April 2012, I have stated that my mission is to ensure Sony continues to be a company that provides customers with kando – to move them emotionally – and inspires and fulfills their curiosity. To this end, I have dedicated myself to transforming the company and enhancing its profitability, and am very proud that now, in the third and final year of our current mid-range corporate plan, we are expecting to exceed our financial targets. And it excites me to hear more and more people enthuse that Sony is back again. As the company approaches a crucial juncture, when we will embark on a new mid-range plan, I consider this to be the ideal time to pass the baton of leadership to new management, for the future of Sony and also for myself to embark on a new chapter in my life.”

When speaking of Kenichiro Yoshia, Mr. Hirai stated; “My successor, Kenichiro Yoshida, has supported me closely since returning to Sony in December 2013 , contributing extensively beyond his remit as CFO and acting as valuable confidant and business partner, as we took on the challenge of transforming Sony together. Mr. Yoshida combines a deeply strategic mindset with a relentless determination to achieve defined targets, and the ability to take a global viewpoint. I believe he possesses the breadth of experience and perspective, as well as the unwavering leadership qualities required to manage Sony’s diverse array of businesses, and as such is the ideal person to drive the company forward into the future. As Chairman, I will of course offer my full support to Mr. Yoshida and the new management team, and do all I can to facilitate a smooth transition and ensure their future success.”

VRGE LE docking station - PlayStation VR

For the full announcement take a look at Sony’s site. As stated by Mr. Yoshida, it’s an incredibly exciting time for Sony. PlayStation VR alone is looking to have great success this year, with up to 280 titles being available for it in 2018. Let us know your opinions on the new Sony changes in the comments below, and for all of the latest news, stay on VRFocus.

Sony to Launch ‘Lost in Music’ VR Campaign with Khalid

Sony Corporation has announced the second instalment of its brand campaign, called ‘Lost in Music’. The brand campaign consists of live music events and a virtual reality (VR) music video for PlayStation VR, both featuring Grammy Award nominee singer and songwriter, Khalid.

Sony Corporation Lost In Music

The Lost in Music campaign will roll out with a two-day live event, kicking off with Khalid in Los Angeles, CA, on 19th January 2018, held at the LA Hangar in Los Angeles. Upon arriving at the event, attendees will discover what it is like to be enveloped in sound as they walk through a specially designed entrance tunnel called the Acoustic Vessel ‘Odyssey.’ The experience will feature 576 speakers, which create an experience where sound field synthesis technology allows guests to follow various sounds as they move around them in the Odyssey. Once they have travelled through Odyssey they will arrive at ‘Dreamscape,’ a performance space designed specifically for Khalid and some special guests.

There will also be an event to launch a Lost in Music video series in New York in February 2018, and the Odyssey and Dreamscape experiences will travel to South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas, from 15th – 16th March 2018.

The new VR music video from Khalid will debut on 15th March 2018, at SXSW. The video will then be available on the PlayStation Store from spring 2018 to be enjoyed on PlayStation VR. No specific release date or pricing details have yet been made available.

“I am so excited to be featured in Sony’s Lost in Music campaign for 2018. I can’t wait for the events in LA and Austin, it’s going to be so awesome to connect with my fans through an experience unlike anything I’ve done before. Plus, I get to show them an awesome new VR music video,” said Khalid.

Khalid photo

“Lost in Music aims to deliver unique experiences combining technologies and music as only Sony can,” said Midori Tomita, VP in charge of UX Business Development, Brand Strategy of Sony Corporation. “We are thrilled to have this opportunity to work with Khalid, who was recently nominated for five Grammy Awards, including best new artist. His unique talents are truly highlighted in this latest instalment of our Lost in Music brand campaign, and we are confident that music fans who experience either the concert events or the VR music video will be wowed.”

You can find out more about the campaign at the official Lost in Music website, and VRFocus will keep you updated with all the latest VR music videos heading to PlayStation VR.