Sony invests $250 million in Epic Games

Stuart360 said:
Kind of like how XSX's more powerful gpu, faster cpu, and faster ram means nothing now, and its all about the hard drive next gen.
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You can look through my post history. I don't make a habit out of trying to downplay the XSX hardware like most of you here do for the PS5
 
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Hal. said:
Tbf the slow walk is in most games nowadays but cinematic PS games in particular...

Nothing fucks me off more than a drugged/drunk/dream section

Holy fuck just wait til I get my new thread privileges and ima go ham on this shit
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As someone advised the Neo extreme Sony fan, it would be wise to calm down or you won't last to thread making privileges.
 
Xbox and Playstation keep swapping wives. It's just a massive orgy where they all just popped ecstasy and can't decide which partner was best, but they all just need to bone and right now.
 
Dory16 said:
Interesting development. We learned a few things. First of all, Tim Sweeney and Epic are no longer neutral in the competition between the console manufacturers for market dominance. By accepting this deal, they have tied their financial well-being to Sony's. It's now in their direct interest for the PS5 to be as successful as possible so their new shareholder will be content and not interfere with any other goals they have and it's in Sony's interest for Fortnite and the UE tech to be as widely adopted as possible. None of that is illegal or dishonest except the part where Tim Sweeney was calling the PS5 revolutionary and comparing it to high end PCs at the same time that he was negotiating to raise as much capital from them as possible. I don't know what that did to the share price of each company but it vaguely sounds to me like something that the Consumer protection agency and even the SEC may want to review.

It also raises the question of where that leaves Microsoft which was probably already a bigger client of Epic than Sony before all this (as far game engine tech is concerned). If I'm Phil Spencer, beyond the raw economics of it which I have analysed above, I can no longer view Epic and Tim Sweeney as a trustworthy partner or supplier. The fact that XGS has enormous reliance on the Unreal Engine is a weakness for Microsoft as of today, no matter how nice Hellblade or the next Obsidian RPG look. You can no longer blindly assume that you are getting the best that the engine can offer for your money and also you are partly making your competitor more successful just by running your business. This is something that you do when you don't have a choice (MS using Blu ray, Sony using Azure) but not when you do. It's exactly why Sony did everything they could to have Amazon as their cloud infrastructure partner before turning to Microsoft.

The logical effect of this is XGS should start exploring and if possible adopting alternatives to UE. Some of the disadvantages of those alternatives now are offset by the fact that they are reducing Xbox's reliance on Epic and this warrants a complete reconsideration. If that Slipspace engine has really costed as much as it is rumored to develop, may be it is up to the task and you start spreading its adoption in order to diversify ASAP. Just my 2 cents.
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MS should buy and invest in Crytek/CryEngine imo
 
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sonomamashine said:
Since the day i discovered you in the Next Gen thread as an Insider (fake of course, everything was false) i never understood what you where saying, the vagueness was on point.
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I was never vague nor ever changed my stance but if that was confusing to you I apologize..

I will bow out of this talk
 
Bryank75 said:
Dun dun dun, the plot thickens!
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More like: The tin foil thickens!
tinfoil-hats.jpg
 
Did anyone really think there wasnt some level of investment between the two of them?
Really?
Sony is going to release their games to PC, its inevitable, and so we will most likely see a Sony/Epic game store block and a Microsoft/Steam game store block as well.
 
Ass of Can Whooping said:
Yup they paid $250M for Sweeny to say shit on twitter

You can't make this up 🤦‍♂️
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Sweeney didn't say shit on twitter. On the contrary. He laid lavish compliments of the PS5. He said beautiful things. To the point that it legitimately seemed like an advertisement.

And now we know why. Sony might not have paid $250M just for him to say nice things. But you can't tell me with a straight face that Sweeney laid all that praise out of the kindness of his heart when we now know that $250M was coming his way.
 
MaulerX said:
Sweeney didn't say shit on twitter. On the contrary. He laid lavish compliments of the PS5. He said beautiful things. To the point that it legitimately seemed like an advertisement.

And now we know why. Sony might not have paid $250M just for him to say nice things. But you can't tell me with a straight face that Sweeney laid all that praise out of the kindness of his heart when we now know that $250M was coming his way.
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No I can't tell you with a straight face that Sweeny went on twitter to pr speak stuff he doesn't actually believe, for a company who'm doesn't care what he says on twitter, and fight some twitter battles on behalf of said company, just because of an investment

Yeah, i'd really struggle saying that with a straight face
 
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Dory16 said:
Interesting development. We learned a few things. First of all, Tim Sweeney and Epic are no longer neutral in the competition between the console manufacturers for market dominance. By accepting this deal, they have tied their financial well-being to Sony's. It's now in their direct interest for the PS5 to be as successful as possible so their new shareholder will be content and not interfere with any other goals they have and it's in Sony's interest for Fortnite and the UE tech to be as widely adopted as possible. None of that is illegal or dishonest except the part where Tim Sweeney was calling the PS5 revolutionary and comparing it to high end PCs at the same time that he was negotiating to raise as much capital from them as possible. I don't know what that did to the share price of each company but it vaguely sounds to me like something that the Consumer protection agency and even the SEC may want to review.

It also raises the question of where that leaves Microsoft which was probably already a bigger client of Epic than Sony before all this (as far game engine tech is concerned). If I'm Phil Spencer, beyond the raw economics of it which I have analysed above, I can no longer view Epic and Tim Sweeney as a trustworthy partner or supplier. The fact that XGS has enormous reliance on the Unreal Engine is a weakness for Microsoft as of today, no matter how nice Hellblade or the next Obsidian RPG look. You can no longer blindly assume that you are getting the best that the engine can offer for your money and also you are partly making your competitor more successful just by running your business. This is something that you do when you don't have a choice (MS using Blu ray, Sony using Azure) but not when you do. It's exactly why Sony did everything they could to have Amazon as their cloud infrastructure partner before turning to Microsoft.

The logical effect of this is XGS should start exploring and if possible adopting alternatives to UE. Some of the disadvantages of those alternatives now are offset by the fact that they are reducing Xbox's reliance on Epic and this warrants a complete reconsideration. If that Slipspace engine has really costed as much as it is rumored to develop, may be it is up to the task and you start spreading its adoption in order to diversify ASAP. Just my 2 cents.
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Sony is a minority stakeholder. We're talking 1-3% (likely 1.5%). Microsoft could become a stakeholder tomorrow if they wanted to. Sony (not PlayStation) owning 1-3% of Epic games isn't going to have an impact on Epic Games. Epic Games will act as it's own company who happens to be partly owned by Sony. They don't need to make Sony happy especially if it negatively affects their overall business as a separate entity by shafting Microsoft.

I think the conspiracy that this investment is related to the praise is absurd. A lot of people are praising PlayStation. Technical people have even sided with Sweeney such as John Carmack and all the people who were giving Linus shit on Twitter. Sony (again not PlayStation) has been showing interest in investing in other companies with the recent bids for Leyou. There was a report last month that Epic Games was trying to raise funding from a bunch of investors and Sony wasn't one of them. People are just upset that Epic didn't praise the Xbox at all and because of all the sensationalized click-bait articles that have headlines quoting/referencing excerpts from Interviews; and act like Epic is going out of their way to spread pro PS5 messaging.

Sony is likely not going to be a whole lot more successful because of this investment. These investment are so that you make more money than your money sitting in the bank. Sony is likely not going to make a whole lot of money from owning Epic Games apart from when they sell it. The fact that they keep raising funding, shows that they are likely reinvesting all their own profits back into the business to grow it. Not using your competitors products is an old mindset that's becoming less prevalent nowadays. Sony probably uses all kinds of Microsoft products and Microsoft uses all kinds of Apple products. Apple uses Windows PCs sometimes and used Bing and Azure for a long time and is now using GCP. Also PlayStation didn't use Azure at first because Azure wasn't really a thing and wasn't nearly as good as AWS when it launched. Worrying about a bit of your money flowing to your competitors is such a trivial thing. It'd be like PlayStation not letting Microsoft release Minecraft on their console because they don't want Microsoft to make money. As a business, if it's a better mousetrap they are going to use it.

The idea that they should look into not using Unreal Engine because Sony owns 1-3% is absurd. I think that Microsoft should develop their own engines but not because Sony owns a small fraction of Epic games. Slipspace is probably not a multi-purpose game engine; considering it's developed by the team whose only going to be developing Halo games.

Companies by stakes in other companies all the time, it doesn't mean much unless it's a big chunk. Microsoft owning both Apple and Facebook doesn't have much of a impact on them and they could care less.
 
Never mind promoting a 1440p/30 demo with one character like it's god, but for $250 million I'd promote a 480p game on DVD as the next coming of next gen.
 
Bloodborne on epic game store, 4K, 60FPS, but you need a super fast SSD to take full advantage of this!
 
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Jimmy Rustle said:
Does an SSD affect framerate and resolution? Or shadows, effects, anti-aliasing solutions, etc?
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It does affect how much data can be transferred that's used for higher quality assets, audio and animations.

There's lots more aspects to games than just resolution and performance.
 
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Looks like Leyou chose their bidder. I wonder if Sony knows they couldn't close the deal and that's why we got this today? Seems like it'd be weird timing to have both announced so soon right?
 
called it!😂😂😂😂😂
Good new is there will probably be some dope Sony exclusives available on epic game store. I could see itexclusively for the PC on EGS,or at least for a time before steam. They're entering the arena with XSX/PC titles to compete in the PC proxy war.
 
I dont really get the 'Epic Store' angle that people are saying. I mean surely if would be Epic moneyhatting Sony for the games to come to the Epic Store, not the other way around. I mean its what Epic have done so far.
 
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eastwood333 said:
PS5 is so REVOLUTIONARY that Sony has to pay Epic 250 million to gush over it.
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Didn't Jeff Grubb and Jason Shreier both say the developers they spoke with prefer the PS5 over the Series X? Then we got that gushing Tweet from Ready at Dawn and that Crytek developer?

Seems like a lot of smoke not to have fire here.
 
Stuart360 said:
I dont really get the 'Epic Store' angle that people are saying. I mean surely if would be Epic moneyhatting Sony for the games to come to the Epic Store, not the other way around. I mean its what Epic have done so far.
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Maybe MS moneyhatted Gabe to make Steam an Xbox exclusive "pie_tears_joy: :pie_roffles: :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
I wonder why they did invest $250M on them. To secure good PS5 support on UE5? It was already happening.
To secure PS5 support on Fortnite? I assume it was already happening.

Maybe it's mostly to secure a good PS5 Fortnite port and get its marketing deal on console with console bundles and so on(while keeping it multi), and to secure MS doesn't get exclusive console stuff they may pay for. Maybe to get a discounted UE5 license for 3rd party PS5 indies? Maybe it's just an investment because they think Epic will earn a lot of money with UE5 because its future looks great because it's getting a great market share specially they're now opening to cinema and tv series too and Fortnite seems to have legs? Because other than that, I don't see why Sony would need to pay that much money to Epic.

Why do you think Sony paid that?
 
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itsjustJEFF said:
I'm actually pretty interested in who else Epic has reached out to for investment possibilities. There's another 1.8 Billion that they were funded, I wonder who they are. I also wonder what Sony is getting out of this deal. Besides, the possibilities of getting a cut from that Fortnite pie, EGS. I personally think it was in part to get a hold of that movie tech and now with UE5 revealed, that nanite and lumin tech.
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Yeah, this is something I've seen several other people speculate and it makes sense considering (and this is my first time finding out) Epic had their tech used for production on The Mandalorian. It could be significant in driving down production costs and Sony investing a cut into the company for that will benefit their film production studios, at least on the tech side.

So from that angle it's rather smart. As to what other company invested the 1.8 billion you bring up, I've no idea. It definitely wasn't Disney though, they don't have the spare money to do so (or maybe they just borrowed yet MORE money to do it xD). I don't think it's Microsoft; Epic's solutions are already well-supported on their platform/ecosystem in terms of 1st-party efforts. I'm struggling to think who that other investor would be tbh.
 
Stuart360 said:
I dont really get the 'Epic Store' angle that people are saying. I mean surely if would be Epic moneyhatting Sony for the games to come to the Epic Store, not the other way around. I mean its what Epic have done so far.
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yurinka said:
I wonder why they did invest $250M on them. To secure good PS5 support on UE5? It was already happening.
To secure PS5 support on Fortnite? I assume it was already happening.

Maybe it's mostly to secure a good PS5 Fortnite port and get its marketing deal on console with console bundles and so on(while keeping it multi), and to secure MS doesn't get exclusive console stuff they may pay for. Maybe to get a discounted UE5 license for 3rd party PS5 indies? Maybe it's just an investment because they think Epic will earn a lot of money with UE5 because its future looks great because it's getting a great market share specially they're now opening to cinema and tv series too and Fortnite seems to have legs? Because other than that, I don't see why Sony would need to pay that much money to Epic.

Why do you think Sony paid that?
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Future Sony/EGS game deals, and some kind of UE5 related stuff.

Sony pays upfront costs of $250M, but any PS game released on PC through EGS gets zero fees by Epic. And UE5 engine fees are reduced or zero too. I think their fee is 5% of sales for any game using UE.

So what's happening is Sony is going heavy in UE5 for games, and will partner up with EGS for PC games later.

If a Sony game sells 10 million copies at an average digital/retailer wholesale price of $50, that's $500 million sales. 5% cut is $25 million to Epic alone for one game.
 
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