(2021-04-15) Epic Games Raises $1B For Longterm Metaverse Plans With $200M From Sony

Epic Games raises $1B for long-term metaverse plans, with $200M from Sony. I asked Sweeney what the killer attraction of the metaverse would be. He said the killer feature is simply getting together with your friends to have great social experiences, like going outdoors for a walk. That’s more fun than just sitting on a couch and talking.

One of the keys to the metaverse will be making realistic animated digital humans

Epic continues to have only a single class of common stock outstanding and CEO Tim Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder of the company.

I asked Sweeney what the killer attraction of the metaverse would be. He said the killer feature is simply getting together with your friends to have great social experiences, like going outdoors for a walk. That’s more fun than just sitting on a couch and talking.

In a game environment, you can constantly go back and forth between the real world stuff and what’s happening in-game and it’s constantly engaging and constantly messing up the conversation,” he said. “I think that’s a key ingredient

Sweeney said he started thinking about the metaverse more seriously in 2017, after Fortnite succeeded. He said it became apparent that all of the science fiction writers were talking about the same thing, even though it had some crazy ideas attached to it.

“There are different threads because if you look at the leading contenders right now, none of them are photorealistic.”

Fortnite has been bringing brands into its universe in an art style that matches the game world, which is more cartoon-like.

“The principle here is every creator owns their original creations and has the right to make the profit from them.”