Sony & LEGO Bet Big on Epic’s Metaverse Plans
The $2B infusion will go a long way towards building the kind of metaverse that Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has been planning for years.
Epic Games already has a genre-defining multiplayer game in Fortnite and a cutting edge game engine in Unreal 5, but now it is taking shape as one of the most promising metaverse platforms. Today, Sony announced it would invest an additional $1B in Epic Games, on top of the $450M the company has already invested. The cash infusion will go a long way towards building the kind of metaverse that Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has been planning for years.
"This investment will accelerate our work to build the metaverse and create spaces where players can have fun with friends, brands can build creative and immersive experiences, and creators can build a community and thrive," Sweeney said in a statement.
The news comes just days after Epic announced a similar billion-dollar investment from LEGO. The two firms are expected to build a kid-friendly, LEGO-themed metaverse that would allow kids worldwide to interact, build virtual projects, and design their own games. If that sounds a lot like Minecraft and Roblox, that is by design.
“Kids enjoy playing in physical and digital worlds and move seamlessly between the two.” Niels Christiansen, CEO of The LEGO Group, explained. “We believe there is huge potential for them to develop lifelong skills such as creativity, collaboration, and communication in both.”
Sweeney owns a controlling stake in the private company, which is now valued at $31.5 Billion. Sweeney has been vocal about changing the dynamics of the gaming landscape. He has railed against the “walled gardens” that dominate the tech industry today and took Apple to court over its 30% app store charges. He lost, but he did force Apple to change its fee structures.
Sweeney’s version of the metaverse requires multiple metaverses to work together. Much like the Web requires standard file formats for displaying pages in browser windows, the metaverse standards for interoperability. Unfortunately, those standards don’t exist yet. As Sweeney told the Washington Post last year:
“You need an entire suite of standards…the metaverse will require a lot of them, file formats for describing a 3-D scene, networking protocols for describing how players are interacting in real-time. Every multiplayer game has a networking protocol of some sort. They don’t all agree, but eventually, they ought to be lined up and made to communicate.”
Fortnite has more than 400M users making it one of the largest “metaverse” platforms right now. Epic’s Unreal Engine is used in 13% of all games. In a space that is evolving fast, Epic has a leg up on many would-be metaverse competitors.
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