Tim Sweeney dismissed the idea of a secret deal between Epic Games and Sony. He noted that the financial investment happened after Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 demo.
According to Tim Sweeney, “serious investment discussions” followed from the UE5 reveal. The beauty of the engine on the next-gen console entranced Sony. It seems this was enough for the tech giant to move with their minority interest.
Fans question Epic CEO praise of PS5
Late last week, Sony pushed for a strategic investment of $250 million on Epic. Even if this is still pending approval, the transfer is almost as good as sealed. Sony’s investment in Epic is rustling feathers within the communities at the moment.
Fans, especially on Reddit and everywhere else, are questioning the move. Theorists are connecting this investment to Sweeney’s gushing praise of the PS5 this year. People are speculating that the deal was on the table for a while now.
People so far are underwhelmed about the Playstation 5’s specs. On paper, it seems it’s the weaker console between it and the Xbox Series. Even then, one of the PS5’s biggest weapons is its super-fast SSD storage.
For the longest time, console loading times have dominated discussion across platforms. With PS5 adding a built-in SSD, players can expect less, if not zero, loading times. This improvement means more seamless loading with every scene.
Timing of Sony’s investment and Sweeney’s praise is suspect
In March, Tim Sweeney was very enthused about the PS5 even when everyone hated it. The Epic CEO called it “god-tier” and was all praise about its potential graphic fidelity.
“(It’s) not just a little bit faster but a lot faster, so that you can bring in this geometry and display it,” said Sweeney in an interview. “Despite it not all fitting and memory, you know, taking advantage of next-generation SSD architectures and everything else.”
“Sony is pioneering here with the PlayStation 5 architecture. It’s got a God-tier storage system which is pretty far ahead of PCs, but on a high-end PC with an SSD and especially with NVMe, you get awesome performance too.”
The timing of Sony’s investment somehow lines up with everything. His praise for the PS5 and the UE5 using the Playstation as a demo device look suspect. Even then, Sweeney himself quashed such allegations.
Yes, here’s what I said back in May below. Serious investment discussions followed from the Unreal Engine 5 demo we showed on PlayStation 5. I guess they liked it!https://t.co/c9x4q1v87P https://t.co/XoOTR5hThU
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 9, 2020
In a tweet, Sweeney says that Sony liked the demo enough for them to invest. He even harkened to another tweet back in May, where he noted everything is public.
What Tim Sweeney is saying is the likely truth. $250 million is a big sum of money, but it’s lunch money compared to Epic’s value. Estimates list them at $17.86 billion in value, with Sweeney commanding a nice $7 billion net worth.
Featured image courtesy of Sundry Photography/Shutterstock