Epic Games releases Unreal Engine 5 for next-generation games

After years of work, Epic Games is formally releasing Unreal Engine 5 so developers can build next-generation games, digital films, and the initial outposts of the metaverse.

If all of that sounds ambitious, it is. I remember the Elemental demo that Epic used to unveil Unreal Engine 4 in 2012. And 10 years later, after many tweaks to the game engine, Epic Games now has something worthy of moving on to a new number in the series.

The game engine is the tool that developers use to create their games and run them in real time as gamers play the titles on the PC, mobile devices, or consoles. It enables developers to write their game software once and then runs it across those different platforms. Normally, Epic Games might have revealed this at the recent Game Developers Conference. But Epic wasn’t sure whether COVID would prevent that from happening at the time it had to decide.