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Sony invests $250 million in Epic Games

Dr Bass

Member
Uh oh, Psykodad must have called in reinforcements to defend Sony's & Sweeny's totally unbiased PS5 shilling

The great thing about technology and programming is that the only real "bias" you can have is towards best performance. There is nothing truly subjective about it.

Do you think the PS5 demo and the decade of work Epic did towards creating an entirely new technology stack for rendering that is unlike anything currently in use and requires the speed of the PS5 SSD for what they showed ... was falsified?

Does anyone here think Tim Sweeney, the guy who is already a billionaire and doesn't need a single cent from Microsoft, Sony, or anyone on the planet, lied so his company could secure a 250 million dollar investment that doesn't materially affect him at all?

Remember he did say the new UE5 tech will work everywhere, but he also said the PS5 speed was required for the level of performance and detail they showed. He also schooled Linux from LTT on the matter of SSD speed.

The amount of people who still don't understand what the UE5 demo was showing is kind of a bummer. It's not just another version of current rendering techniques and engine architecture.

But if Sony investing in the best graphics programming company in the entire world sets off your "conspiracy" alarm over video games, you do you I guess.

Sweeney is a joke alongside people who believed him.

Yeah, totally. BTW, what line of work are you world famous for being a pioneer and leading authority in?
 
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Arkam

Member
and why are you so sure of this?

Cuz I know intimately about their relationship over the last couple years and their collaborations on PS5 and UE5. (Mods feel free to vet me on this) This investment was a surprise to me today... but it just makes so much sense with Sony stated intentions and the current market climate. Their main competitor (MS) has widened the "console war" to the PC platform and Sony must either ignore or compete. Sony wants in China and PC... this helps both.
 

quest

Not Banned from OT
So i was absolutely right but but there is no "secret deal" from a guy who said the PS3 was easy to program for so lol. So 250 million for that demo and exclusive IO rewrite and the "A" version of the engine. Not a bad investment to try and dreamcast the series x. Just hope Microsoft engineers are up to the task of taking the generic "B" version of the engine and making it run respectable. As i said before if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is probably a duck 100% correct!
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
The great thing about technology and programming is that the only real "bias" you can have is towards best performance. There is nothing truly subjective about it.

Do you think the PS5 demo and the decade of work Epic did towards creating an entirely new technology stack for rendering that is unlike anything currently in use and requires the speed of the PS5 SSD for what they showed ... was falsified?

Does anyone here think Tim Sweeney, the guy who is already a billionaire and doesn't need a single cent from Microsoft, Sony, or anyone on the planet, lied so his company could secure a 250 million dollar investment that doesn't materially affect him at all?

Remember he did say the new UE5 tech will work everywhere, but he also said the PS5 speed was required for the level of performance and detail they showed. He also schooled Linux from LTT on the matter of SSD speed.

The amount of people who still don't understand what the UE5 demo was showing is kind of a bummer. It's not just another version of current rendering techniques and engine architecture.

But if Sony investing in the best graphics programming company in the entire world sets off your "conspiracy" alarm over video games, you do you I guess.



Yeah, totally. BTW, what line of work are you world famous for being a pioneer and leading authority in?

Another one of your totally unbiased opinions? Is that you Tim?
 
The great thing about technology and programming is that the only real "bias" you can have is towards best performance. There is nothing truly subjective about it.

Do you think the PS5 demo and the decade of work Epic did towards creating an entirely new technology stack for rendering that is unlike anything currently in use and requires the speed of the PS5 SSD for what they showed ... was falsified?

Does anyone here think Tim Sweeney, the guy who is already a billionaire and doesn't need a single cent from Microsoft, Sony, or anyone on the planet, lied so his company could secure a 250 million dollar investment that doesn't materially affect him at all?

Remember he did say the new UE5 tech will work everywhere, but he also said the PS5 speed was required for the level of performance and detail they showed. He also schooled Linux from LTT on the matter of SSD speed.

The amount of people who still don't understand what the UE5 demo was showing is kind of a bummer. It's not just another version of current rendering techniques and engine architecture.

But if Sony investing in the best graphics programming company in the entire world sets off your "conspiracy" alarm over video games, you do you I guess.



Yeah, totally. BTW, what line of work are you world famous for being a pioneer and leading authority in?
I agree 99% but to pretend like Sweeney hasn't been predicting the fall of PC gaming and saying "what is on consoles is impossible elsewhere" since the PS2 is a bit much.

Sweeney might be world famous as a pioneer but he has his share of inane hyperbole surrounding this EXACT topic. The internet never forgets.
 

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
Some people are sure Sweeney's comments are as a result of this deal and some people think they've signed this deal because those comments are genuinely. I can't decide either way but feel free to pick your hill.
 
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Airbus Jr

Banned
So nobody here gona asked why Microsoft Xbox just gona let this happened

Gears of War is one of Unreal Engine biggest customer and both brand has become quite synonymous to each other

If theres anyone doing this deal it should be microsoft in the first place
 
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I do hope this means UE5 isn’t feature gimped for Xbox support. Would be utterly stupid, due to pc also using DX, but still, anything is possible once money changes hands.

Honestly I wouldn't worry about that happening. Sony isn't going to pay Epic Games to gimp their engine on Xbox. What I do see happening is that maybe that investment is part of a deal to include optimizations for the PS5 in the Unreal Engine.

Something I can see happening is Epic adding features so that developers can take advantage of the PS5s I/O. After all they wouldn't shit up about it so I expect that's being done with Unreal Engine 5. It also makes sense for Sony to make this investment because the Unreal Engine is a multiplatform engine used by many developers. It's just a way of ensuring that the PS5s I/O is taken advantage of.

With that said I wouldn't be worried about Unreal Engine games on Xbox. Plenty of Microsoft studios use the engine so I wouldn't be surprised if they worked with Epic on it.
 

Dr Bass

Member
Another one of your totally unbiased opinions? Is that you Tim?

Nope, not Tim. :messenger_beaming:

Maybe I'm biased in some ways. Maybe I'm not. I'm definitely reasoned. I have to be as a software engineer. And that's the perspective I'm bringing to all of this. Also, if you didn't notice in another thread I stated I was hoping to use the Series X as my "main" console so this has nothing to do with stupid console wars. I buy them all. This is about gamer stupidity and people with zero ability casting aspersions on industry figureheads because they don't like reality.

I agree 99% but to pretend like Sweeney hasn't been predicting the fall of PC gaming and saying "what is on consoles is impossible elsewhere" since the PS2 is a bit much.

Sweeney might be world famous as a pioneer but he has his share of inane hyperbole surrounding this EXACT topic. The internet never forgets.

Being wrong in a prediction (I'm not aware of these, but I'd like to look them up) is not the same thing as lying for cash. And that was my point. Programming results and hardware performance do not lie. Acting like the PS5 demo wasn't real and that what Epic, not just Tim Sweeney but their head of graphics etc, said about the rendering technologies involved, and how long it took to build them and the effort involved was a lie is just ... plain ... dumb.

It would be like if I delivered some insanely awesome new feature to a product that took a decade of inventing and ingenuity, and the response from people who were at a competing company said "Oh yeah, RIGHT! You just want money from your clients!" Like ... wtf? Which also begs another question ... if Epic was indeed just "shilling" for Sony, wouldn't investing 250 million dollars in a lie for no control over anything be the dumbest thing on the planet that they could do? I swear people don't think at all.

Anyway, I know this will fall on deaf ears, but I just have one thing to say in closing.

The Xbox Series X is going to be bad ass and probably the best place to play almost all 3rd party games ... Now you all don't know what the hell to do, do you?
 
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jakinov

Member
Well, Unreal Engine is using royalties system so whatever money Microsoft will make on selling those exclusives, 5% of it goes to Epic. From now on, part of it (very small part though) will go to Sony...
A very very small part of it if ever. Unless a part of the deal or Epic regularly pays back stakeholders, the owners probably aren't getting money back through dividends. The value that investors are probably expecting back are likely from the company value growth and just maybe profits in the future. The fact that Epic keeps fund raising means that they are likely also pouring all their profits back into the company in attempts to do more things (like their new HQ, Epic Games Store, Unreal Engine 5, etc.)
 

BluRayHiDef

Banned
Well, Unreal Engine is using royalties system so whatever money Microsoft will make on selling those exclusives, 5% of it goes to Epic. From now on, part of it (very small part though) will go to Sony...
Why doesn't Microsoft do what Sony has done and invest in Epic? Have they already done so, considering that one of their biggest franchises, Gears of War, runs on Unreal Engine?
 

jakinov

Member
So nobody here gona asked why Microsoft Xbox just gona let this happened

Gears of War is one of Unreal Engine biggest customer and both brand has become quite synonymous to each other

If theres anyone doing this deal it should be microsoft in the first place
Why would Microsoft care that Sony bought 1-3% of Epic Games? Microsoft can't stop them if they wanted to. Microsoft can do the same thing if they wanted to aswell. Microsoft had every opportunity to do this "deal" and probably still does. It was reported last month that Epic was looking for $750M in funding from investors. This "deal" gives Sony no real power over Epic, it's an investment.
 

tryDEATH

Member
Nope, not Tim. :messenger_beaming:

Maybe I'm biased in some ways. Maybe I'm not. I'm definitely reasoned. I have to be as a software engineer. And that's the perspective I'm bringing to all of this. Also, if you didn't notice in another thread I stated I was hoping to use the Series X as my "main" console so this has nothing to do with stupid console wars. I buy them all. This is about gamer stupidity and people with zero ability casting aspersions on industry figureheads because they don't like reality.



Being wrong in a prediction (I'm not aware of these, but I'd like to look them up) is not the same thing as lying for cash. And that was my point. Programming results and hardware performance do not lie. Acting like the PS5 demo wasn't real and that what Epic, not just Tim Sweeney but their head of graphics etc, said about the rendering technologies involved, and how long it took to build them and the effort involved was a lie is just ... plain ... dumb.

It would be like if I delivered some insanely awesome new feature to a product that took a decade of inventing and ingenuity, and the response from people who were at a competing company said "Oh yeah, RIGHT! You just want money from your clients!" Like ... wtf? Which also begs another question ... if Epic was indeed just "shilling" for Sony, wouldn't investing 250 million dollars in a lie for no control over anything be the dumbest thing on the planet that they could do? I swear people don't think at all.

Anyway, I know this will fall on deaf ears, but I just have one thing to say in closing.

The Xbox Series X is going to be bad ass and probably the best place to play almost all 3rd party games ... Now you all don't know what the hell to do, do you?

Your contradicting yourself there my man.

UE is Timmy's engine if anyone would know the results of programing and hardware performances it would be him, so him making "predictions" that aren't true clearly makes him out as the liar. Same for the extensive over hyping of the PS5, he doesn't have to lie, he can just over hype it like he has been, which makes him disingenuous and not trust worthy especially now with this deal becoming public.
 

jakinov

Member
We going to get Sony games exclusively on Epic Games Store?
Probably not. PlayStation is likely not going to limit their profits because daddy owns 1-3% of a business. It'd be like a kid shopping at wal-mart over the store that's going to make them more save them more money because their dad owns some stock in wal-mart. The dad has the ability to force the kid to shop at wal-mart but he'd probably rather the kid make more money save more money than make a negligible impact on the value of his stock.
 

waxer

Member
So what percentage of playstation users even know what ue5 is or look at Tim sweenys tweets lol. Fucking expensive marketing right there lol.

This deal seems like a good fit. Between gaming and movies divisions.

Personally I don't see the problem with developers having favourites or opinions based off their needs and style of development. I don't get why that's used as an insult as if it proves any statement said otherwise wrong.

For example I like Sony. Doesn't invalidate the statement that ps5 can be situated verticly on a stand.

Same as saying I prefer xbox for its cpu or more powerful gpu shouldn't be discredited because a person develops on it.

All your left with is a bunch of people arguing about whether statements are real based of perceived alliances rather than on the validity of statements themselves.
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
The Xbox Series X is going to be bad ass and probably the best place to play almost all 3rd party games ... Now you all don't know what the hell to do, do you?

Nice try, but I'm not paying you $250,00,000 no matter what you say about XsX, sorry. Maybe see if Phil will go for that deal.
 

Dr Bass

Member
Your contradicting yourself there my man.

UE is Timmy's engine if anyone would know the results of programing and hardware performances it would be him, so him making "predictions" that aren't true clearly makes him out as the liar. Same for the extensive over hyping of the PS5, he doesn't have to lie, he can just over hype it like he has been, which makes him disingenuous and not trust worthy especially now with this deal becoming public.

I was talking about his predictions about the death of PC gaming, and things like that, vs talking about his own work with definitive statements. So I wasn't contradicting myself.

That said, after getting some more info on past events (literally between my last post and this one) I can understand the skepticism around some of his comments. I still stand by the fact he's a bad ass programmer and Epic has no reason to lie about what they are doing, but it's just not worth arguing about. Maybe I'm wrong and Epic are literally evil geniuses. But regardless, I guarantee both systems are going to be great and have great games. I'm going to get them both. I'm definitely not trying to start fights. Overall seems win win to me. 🤷‍♂️

Edit: I just realized, I changed my opinion a bit after getting some more info. Maybe I was biased. :pie_thinking:
 
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ZehDon

Member
Well, I guess it’s pretty lucky that the PS5 is a “masterpiece” of design work, otherwise Epic would be stuck prioritising for a lesser machine. What are the odds...
 
LMAO!!!!!! Vindicated!!!!! Now all marketing nonsense makes sense! So.... sony fans, do you want to retract from your previous comments?

It would be funny if MS came in with there 1 trillion dollar value and just threw 1 billion(drop in the bucket)into the pot.

Sony buying for that Epic marketing. This is hilarious! It's "REVOLUTIONARY" guys!!
 
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Xenon

Member
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Nothing to see here.
 

3liteDragon

Member
Pretty fuckin hilarious that you got people on this thread thinking they know more than the CEO of Epic Games and the guy behind the creation of UE who actually understands the tech behind all this. Every time they talk about the PlayStation 5, they specifically praise it’s storage architecture (AKA the SSD) because it’s a key piece of tech that was used to demonstrate one of UE5’s highlight features, Nanite. Why is it a big deal then and why did they choose to show the demo off on PS5? It’s because of the SSD’s ability to load in highly detailed geometry (approx. changing detail/LOD per frame on 20 million triangles, through the primitive shaders feature) in a matter of seconds through 16GB of GDDR6 RAM. Cerny talks about this during the “Road to PS5” event, he talks about how RAM is being used more efficiently since it only has to contain data for the next 1 second of gameplay. (Compared to PS4 containing data 30 seconds prior to it actually being used, inefficient use of RAM) Just being able to load high-quality assets ON THE FLY has a huge impact on game design, which we have yet to see in 2-3 years when devs get more and more familiar with the hardware itself. That demo approximately contained about 100’s of billions of triangles being crunched down to just about 20 million at very high speeds (SSD bandwidth) per frame depending on how close to/far away from an object you are. (LOD’s won’t be noticeable) Especially, during that last sequence of the demo where she starts flying, what you’re seeing is highly-detailed geometry being instantly streamed in from the SSD and through RAM with no visible pop-ins. Now, obviously the Series X can this demo, low-end and high-end PC’s can run this demo, hell even smartphones will be able to run this demo. That’s the whole point of an engine like this, it’s supposed to be scalable to run on the appropriate hardware. But will it run the demo with the same level of geometric detail being streamed in at instantaneous speeds? No. Like Sweeney said, PS5’s storage architecture blows high-end PC’s out of the water and yea he isn’t wrong. A high-end PC with the current architecture it uses won’t be running the demo at the exact same geometric level as the PS5. This reminds me of the time when Linus Tech Tips literally mocked Sweeney for saying that PS5’s storage architecture is way ahead of current high-end PC’s. Then the guy literally proceeds to bring out a $1,900+ SSD and talks about how it has a higher read/write speed than the PS5’s SSD, only to put out an apology video a few days later. My point being, the hardware you saw Nanite being demonstrated on (PS5) is the absolute best hardware (AS OF RIGHT NOW) that’s capable of handling geometry at that level of fidelity. PC’s are gonna be adopting this tech in the near-future as well, this is a win-win situation for gamers in the end and helps drive the industry forward.

And LOL at the ones thinking Sony’s 1.4% stake/investment in a company already worth billions means “SONY PS5 EXCLUSIVES ON EPIC STORE” “THEY PAID THEM FOR DEMO” “MARKETING DEAL”. If it was a marketing deal, then why the hell didn’t I see PlayStation themselves advertising it on their social media handles that very same day the demo was shown off? I mean, they paid Epic right, would be a waste of money if you don’t even bother to advertise it on your social media handles which have a massive following as well.

Anyone expecting a massive difference between these two consoles when it comes to third-party games are pretty much setting themselves up for disappointment. Both of these consoles are gonna be awesome and more capable than people think and the future of gaming is looking brighter than ever before. Whether you’re “team blue” or “team green” or an “Xbot” or a “Sony pony”, we’re all gamers in the end and all I see is that, we’re in for a hell of a treat next-gen.

✌️
 
My dream scenario would be for PS Store games to be linked with Epic Game Store and vice versa
Also for Epic Game Store games to be playable on the PS5. lol
 

CamHostage

Member
If Sony was hiring Epic to make "Lumen in the Land of Nanite: The Videogame" using that girl and her magic powers as she goes cave-raiding, the way MS hired Epic to turn its UE3 demos into Gears of War, then that'd be great.

As is, it's just a relationship deal, and I don't see the need for them when the engine provider will be providing anyway (and it calls up some questions in the public eye,) but whatever, they happen all the time and it's just how business goes. I'm pretty confident Epic will work its ass off making sure UE5 is go-to software for developer of whatever platform it supports if the audience demand is there.

Apparently this small minority stake gives Sony complete control over Epic based on some of the replies in this thread.

Heh. By the numbers, it's about 50 days of Fortnite revenue. If Epic really thought this was going to destroy their relationship with MS, they could have just waited 6-8 weeks...

Honestly I wouldn't worry about that happening. Sony isn't going to pay Epic Games to gimp their engine on Xbox.

I mean, Sony made an engine that was used to make multiplatform games, and in the case of Below, a (previously) Xbox-exclusive was made using Sony's PhyreEngine software for only Microsoft consoles. (And it might have been vice-versa probably if XNA had worked out, but MS does own Havoc physics engine and that's not locked out.)

You can sell software and other consumer products with exclusives and timed-exclusives, but tech doesn't work out as easily if you try to lock people out. It's easier to participate in wider success.
 
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