Technically speaking it is not actual news. It was announced last year but they missed a deadline or so!
But Unreal Engine is being integrated with Fortnite. As 'Unreal Editor for Fortnite'
One could easily imagine that the recent deal with LEGO would be part of this to create a Roblox like platform.
LEGO as part of this is not confirmed though. But very likely in my opinion. Smart move Epic on both ends!
This of cause means bad news for poor Unity in the long run! As thousands of aspiring young developers could very easily be sucked into the tool set of a probably more simplified workflow of Unreal Engine. It could very much serve as the training wheels for the full Unreal Engine.
Well theoretically at least! If the plan works is yet to be seen. But probably! Wouldn't count it out it would have an effect.
Earlier Epic was throwing some money after Core (Looking like Unity) but built on Unreal. It is not my impression that Core never became a big thing. (Not surprised)
Personally I am not expecting an actual qualified market response from our Danish born Unity Technologies, now a US company.
Buying Roblox is probably not in the cards?!?! Roblox has A LOT of the young users! But both companies (Roblox and Unity) are operating at pretty huge annual losses... but minus * minus equals plus Jonas!
And building a competing platform from scratch without the users....... good luck with that!
I just don't think it was ever part of the Unity plan anyways.
So overall I think it spells somewhat bad news for Unity in the >long< run. All this will take years to play out of cause. It's not an instant effect but a long term strategic effect that will be something to deal with.
Having investors throw money at Unity seems like a more risky proposition to keep the company afloat until they (maybe) turn the boat around and start making money.
Unity seems to be diversifying as a company with it's various purchases. So let's see if that will be enough to keep it floating for the long term.
But focus will suffer.. and has been suffering for a long time. Unity works!! But also a bit of a patchwork of sometimes finished sometimes not so finished solutions.
** Adding: Both Unreal Engine and Unity is both HUGE engines with large file sizes and complexity and responsiveness. A small light weight game engine like Godot is like going back in time to work with something that is very light on it's footing. This alone could drive more and more devs towards the lighter engines like Godot. Though when a game engine has it's workflow and claws in developers it takes something extra to change and adopt new ways. In the long run I see Godot chipping away ever so slowly at especially the Unity indie market. Who knows.. maybe there will be some grand following moment at some point.
Google trends indicates that Unity is still king in global interest! Godot got a significant boost with version 4. (Only expecting steady growth there). Unreal Engine interest is tiny compared to Unity and somewhat static. Fortnite interest DWARFS all mentioned. Channeling developers into the Unreal fold will certainly have potential for Epic.
Also take into account that this is the big broad global averages that doesn't take the specific type of production into account. Eg. Unreal would be looking quite differently if we could filter for AAA like productions. Of which there are inherently fewer compared to indie and mobile games that Unity has a very firm grasp on. For now at least.. Godot 'might' change this in forthcoming years
https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... bc90&hl=en
Unreal Editor For Fortnite!
Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) is a new PC application for designing, developing, and publishing games and experiences directly into Fortnite. With many of Unreal Engine 5’s powerful tools and workflows at your fingertips, including custom asset import, modeling, materials and VFX, Sequencer and Control Rig, you’ll have a whole new world of options for producing and publishing games and experiences for Fortnite that can be enjoyed by millions of players.
UEFN works side-by-side with Fortnite’s existing Creative toolset, and teams of creators can work together across PC and console to develop and test islands in real-time.
Also included is the new programming language Verse. It offers powerful customization capabilities such as manipulating or chaining together devices and the ability to easily create new game logic.
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/fortnite--uefn
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