The era of Unreal Engine 4 is officially over. Starting today, all video game developers will have access to the new Unreal Engine 5 to create new next-generation gaming experiences across PC, Console, and Mobile. We have seen a lot of Unreal Engine 5 over the last few years, starting with the announcement and showcase of the engine during PlayStation’s initial marketing campaign for the then-unreleased PlayStation 5.
The engine promised jaw-dropping visuals, incredible lighting tools, and is easily the most advanced game engine to date. For those that don’t know what an engine is, they are essentially the tools that developers use to create their games. For example, if every game that someone makes requires lighting, whether that be the sun or from an indoor source, it makes no sense to create the tools to do that from scratch for every single project. Instead, it can be added to the engine so when the next game is being made, you have the tools prebuilt to make those lighting effects come to life without the need for the labor and budget-intensive task of creating those tools.
With Unreal Engine 5 now being released to all video game developers, we should start seeing games running on the engine very soon from partners that have had access to the engine early, like PlayStation for example. For everyone else, we can expect to see UE5 become the staple engine of choice for many game developers, similar to how UE4 became the go-to engine for most studios. I cannot wait to see more games on the engine to showcase the true capabilities of next-gen video games, hopefully, UE5 is a stepping stone to get to the experiences that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles are capable of.
Source: Twitter
