Developers Are Divided - What We Already Know About…

In a recent interview, Epic's boss Tim Sweeney gave some insights into the development of the latest Unreal Engine.

Ue 6 thumb — When can we expect to see Unreal Engine 6? Tim Sweeney packt aus. ©GDC

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney reveals information about the upcoming Unreal Engine 6 for the first time - including a planned release window and other features that are supposed to revolutionize the gaming world. Some of these aspects have been criticized by gamers and developers.

The New Featuresper

Although everyone is still talking about Unreal Engine 5, information about Unreal Engine 6 is making us listen up - because for gamers of all kinds, the news is mostly great. Many of the changes are to focus on more straightforward development, improved performance and even a new programming language. All of this gives gamers hope for a new technological step forward.

Fortnite — Looking forward to the Unreal Engine 6! ©Epic Games

Two Become One

While there are currently two "branches" of the Unreal Engine, namely the one for developers of all types of games and the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), Epic's goal is to merge the two. The big hurdle in the past was apparently the sheer mass of platforms for which both had to be maintained. And so the new "Verse" language has already been introduced in the UEFN, which will then become the standard for the upcoming, merged Unreal Engine 6. This will make development easier overall by ensuring greater consistency.

Better Performance For Everyone

The new version is supposedly making progress in an area with which Epic has had problems for some time: Multithreading. Gamers should be pleased, as the availability of this could bring an extreme increase in performance. However, one might ask why this was not done earlier and Sweeney gives us the answer: He explains that game simulations are still single-threaded on Unreal Engine 5, as it would make the development of games much easier. However, this also means that only one of, for example, 16 CPU cores, is used for this purpose. This of course slows down the engine completely, which is why Epic has decided to leave this complicated programming task to developers with Unreal Engine 6.

Processor Pexels Pixabay — The new engine should be able to make full use of your CPU. ©Pixabay via Pexels

Nothing Without Criticism

At the end, we learn that we will probably not see Unreal Engine 6 before the end of 2028, more likely 2029. We could be really looking forward to this, but gamers are critical of the development. There is a lot of complaining and some are calling on Epic to take care of the existing Unreal Engine 5 first, as the problems here are hard to overlook: These include performance problems such as stuttering or long loading times and poorly running games, even on high-end PCs.

Oblivion remaster 2 — Players are still complaining about the performance of UE5. ©Bethesda

Sometimes, It's Not UE5's Fault

However, it should be said at this point that the Unreal Engine should not be blamed for everything: Many developers are simply not experienced enough, or simply don't want to optimize their games much at all. As gamers, we can actually look forward to games with Unreal Engine 6 - and as developers to the challenges.

Satisfactory is an example of a well-optimized UE5 game. ©Coffee Stain

What do you think? Are you already sick of the Unreal Engine or are you looking forward to this revolutionary development?

Game selection

Developers Are Divided - What We Already Know About Unreal Engine 6