News hardware Epic Games is investing heavily in the metaverse
With its flagship game Fortnite, Epic Games is undoubtedly one of the most advanced publishers in terms of virtual experience in a 3D environment. In this sense, the company seems well placed to develop a future metaverse, or at least, to build the foundations. For this reason, Epic Games invests heavily in the metaverse.
The video game giant has just invested in Hadean, a London start-up specializing in the metaverse. Concretely, the company aims to build virtual environment infrastructures for giants such as Epic Games or Sony.
Through this fundraiser organized by Molten Ventures, Headen managed to register funding of up to 30 million – a figure that testifies to the giants’ enthusiasm for this sector of the metaverse.
Main motivation? Several experts, including the consulting firm McKinsey, estimate that the metaverse might generate up to 5,000 billion dollars by 2030. In this logic, start-ups approaching near or far the metaverse represent an investment attractive speculative asset for various capital funds. In this sense, InQTel, 2050 Capital or even Alumni Ventures participated in this spectacular fundraising alongside Epic Games.
Hadean a strategic choice for Epic Games
Only, for the development studio, the motivations are quite different. Indeed, Epic Games already operates a “metaverse infrastructure technology” through its Unreal Engine.
“Hadean’s computing power will provide the necessary infrastructure as we work to create a scalable metaverse. Epic Games’ Unreal Engine comprehensive enterprise technology will enable it to accommodate massive amounts of concurrent users and unlock new tools for creators and developers. says Marc Petit, vice president of Epic’s Unreal Engine ecosystem.
Concretely, Hadean offers solutions to develop different experiences within the metaverse such as:
- virtual concerts
- An interconnection between different metaverses
- web3 games
- And other immersive digital experiences…
By allying with Hadean, wouldn’t Epic games be thinking regarding a potential metaverse made on Unreal Engine?
To this day, the multiple metaverses have been criticized for their unrealistic graphics. However, the concept of virtual world requires an immersive 3D environment. Thus, a studio like Epic Games might provide a real answer to this problem with its Unreal Engine 5.
It is possible that it stops at the stage of hypothesis… However, at the beginning of the year, Epic Games had raised 2 billion dollars from big names to finance the development of a future metaverse.
“This investment will accelerate our work to build the metaverse and create spaces where players can have fun with their friends, where brands can build creative and immersive experiences, and where creators can build community and thrive. explained Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games.
Sony or even Lego were part of this exceptional fundraiser.
With this new investment, Epic Games continue to explore the path of the metaverse by building an extensive network to develop a possible competitor to Meta.