Epic Games announced today the release of the version 4.25 of its popular Unreal Engine, which is now ready for next-gen consoles. If the Unreal Engine 4 gave us some great-looking games during this console generation, Epic said today that it’s just getting started with optimising its engine for next-gen platforms.
“For game developers, this is the first release with initial support for Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X as first-class platforms, and throughout the year we will be updating the 4.25-Plus branch with optimizations, fixes, and certification requirements to support developers launching on the next generation of consoles. Features include platform-specific functionality, such as new audio advancements, initial support for online subsystems, and early support for TRC and XR certification requirements.”
For those unfamiliar, Epic made its Unreal Engine free to use in 2015, though the company’s publishing license requires developers to pay 5% of royalties when their product succeeds. This attractive business model, combined with the engine’s versatility really contributed to its success during this console generation, and Microsoft used the Unreal Engine 4 for many of its games including Gears of War 4 and 5, Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, or the upcoming Minecraft Dungeons.
“Another feature to reach production-readiness with this release is support for HoloLens 2. As well as performance improvements, there’s new support for mixed reality capture from a third-person camera view, the new ability to enable HoloLens remoting from packaged Unreal Engine applications via a command line, and initial support for Azure Spatial Anchors,” Epic Games announced today.
The Unreal Engine can be downloaded for free from the Epic Games launcher. You can learn more about the engine and its different licensing options on this page.
