Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, has started to talk about Unreal Engine 6. It may be hard to believe, but it is true. Tim Sweeney, who is the CEO of Epic Games, is present at the Unreal Fest Japan event, where he is predicting the future of the gaming industry while most of the people around are still struggling to figure out the full potential of UE5. He said, though this is somewhat loose translation, that in the next two and a half years the best features of both the UE5 and the Fortnite ecosystem will be combined. That very merger will be the driving force behind the creation of UE6. Amazing, isn’t it? If you do the math, probably the release date would be 2028.
The gaming industry definitely considered this to be major news. Unreal Engine is a heartbeat of large-scale games and new version always leads to new possibilities. However, the Fortnite aspect is really what people are interested in the most. Fortnite has grown into a platform instead of just a game; it is the place where different things are trying out. The company has launched numerous features of UE5 to the players in real-time and on a large scale via Fortnite. Hence, the concept of merging means that UE6 will initially come with features that support live-service and large-scale gaming. It has ceased to be an engine for single-player story games only. It has become the engine for the Fortnites of future years.
Yet, let’s analyze it in a realistic way for a second. The online reactions have been…mixed. To say the least. A fair number of players leaving comments do not seem to be happy at all. The word “stutter” is being referred to over and over again as if it is a major issue. One user, BigGeordieUK, bluntly stated “unreal engine 6 now with 6x the stutter.” Ouch. Another user, following the same thought, said “Now, with more stutter.” It is becoming a trend. A significant number of players still encounter major performance problems when playing games that utilize UE5 technology and they believe that the issue is that the tech is far ahead of the optimization. A user with the name 72888hshu sadly said, “Jesus christ optimize UE5 first,” which is a fair point, to be honest.
And then there is the whole issue of Fortnite performance debate. User tay2matic brought attention to the current situation in the extremely popular game, “fortnite hasn’t been optimized for UE5 since the ch4.” MrBrooks456 even participated in a discussion about how the game has been “unoptimised for about 4 years” on some systems. Therefore, the idea of merging this allegedly troublesome ecosystem with a new engine raises doubts and even mistrust in Epic. It’s like saying, besides fixing the foundation, why not also start building the penthouse?
However, it is not all bad news. In fact, quite the opposite; there are people who are really excited. User spiridonbounas tweeted, very optimistically, “If this drops in 2028, game dev is about to jump a whole generation in one step. UE6 + Fortnite tech merging is going to be insane.” And that’s the other side of the coin. This could be a massive thing. Integrating Fortnite’s cross-platform technology that supports thousands of concurrent players, its content delivery, its creator economy, with the raw graphical power of Unreal Engine? That is precisely the kind of thing that has the potential to change online worlds. User JohnnyBluPls even exclaimed it, saying “UE6 will be the real metaverse.” He might be right.
Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yes, the skepticism is still very much present. A plethora of comments reflect that people are confused about the timeline. User slotslv put it this way: “We didn’t even get many games on UE 5, and now we UE 6.” It does indeed seem like a rapid pace. It’s as though we are still waiting for the complete wave of native UE5 games to truly arrive while the engine team is already looking years ahead. TheYellingKitty referred to Rocket League and lamented that it “still hasn’t even got UE5 yet.” It illustrates the gap between the engine’s capabilities and the reality of long game development cycles, which are really long, man, so long.
And then there are the huge number of requests for features that are not related to visuals at all. User marceendless popped the bubble that was created around the hype and made a very down-to-earth statement: “We do not need graphics, we need them to listen to players, a better system that detects cheaters and bans them, a game without stupid glitches.” That’s pretty much the vibe.
