Epic's World is the Place to "Be"
Epic Games announced that they will be acquiring the developer of Fall Guys, Mediatonic. The Epic Game portfolio now includes Fortnite, Rocket Leagues (acquired Psyonix in 2019), and Fall Guys. Fall Guys created a completely new experience for the battle royale genre that took the gaming community by storm. Compared to other battle royale titles, Fall Guys is much more casual.
Epic Games’ vision is to be more than just a game has been clearly communicated by Tim Sweeney, they want to be a platform and an owner of one of the primary metaverses. This has already started to happen as players come to Fortnite just to socialize. To build the assumed vision of a metaverse, users need to be engaging with the platform's other users, and this is why games are the best place to start building a metaverse.
Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League all follow a common theme of bringing people together. They’re games built on the idea that playing together is better than playing alone, and we would expect Epic Games to target more games that fall into this category. Other interesting targets for acquisition could be: Facepunch Studios (Developer of Garry’s Mod and Rust), InnerSloth (Developer of Among Us), or Proletariat (Developer of Spellbreak).
Unity Looks to the Construction Industry
On the same day, Epic Games and Unity announced acquisitions that expand the breadth of what their engines can accomplish. Epic Games announced the acquisition of photogrammetry software maker Capturing Reality and Unity announced the acquisition of VisualLive, an augmented reality company. Both of these acquisitions showcase how game engines provide value outside of gaming.
Capturing Reality is a photogrammetry software that allows for users to create realistic 3D models from 2D images. This allows Unreal Engine users to create scenes easier and make them realistic through just a picture. This will have tons of use cases outside of gaming, especially in areas like corporate training and film.
VisualLive, while being an AR company, was actually built for the construction industry. You would import massive building information modeling (BIM) files into VisualLive and then they would be viewable through HoloLens or mobile devices in augmented reality. The technology is expected to complement Unity Reflect and allow Unity to expand further into the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) markets. As predicted from Unity's S1, construction is one of Unity's primary targets for engine revenue expansion.
