Epic Talks About Its Close Relationship With Sony And PS5 For Unreal Engine 5

Epic Games has revealed Unreal Engine 5, which will power the next-generation of games. The engine will be used for games across PS5, Xbox Series X, PC, and more, but Epic's Tim Sweeney indicated Sony's hardware is what they're working with more closely.

According to The Verge, the PS5's approach to storage management is an area where Epic Games and Sony are working closely together. Sweeney says that both consoles will be capable of supporting the faster memory speeds required by next-gen games, but that their strong relationship with Sony means that they're working more closely with them than Microsoft in this area.

During an interview with Geoff Keighley following the reveal, Sweeney explained why faster storage speeds are such a big deal for next-gen.

"This is going to enable the types of immersion we’ve only dreamed of in the past," said Sweeney in the interview. "The world of loading screens is over. The days of pop in and geometry popping up as you’re going through these game environments are ended. The resulting effect is the ability to build games that are fully immersive from start to finish over hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Both Microsoft and Sony have detailed the specs of their respective consoles already, with a clear divide between a focus on graphical power and storage speed. Sony's Mark Cerny explained how the PS5's custom storage management solution is vital to the design of the console, and Tim Sweeney's excitement for it is important given his expertise and the level of adoption Unreal Engine has in the game development community.

Sony has yet to reveal the PS5 though, but has already shown off the console's new DualSense 5 controller.