Sony Has Invested Another $200 Million In Epic Games
The list of investors includes Sony, which is pocketing another $200 million, and private equity firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Epic Games, one of the world’s largest video game companies, has raised $1 billion in the financing, bringing the total value of the company to $28.7 billion.
Epic has a valuation of $17 billion, meaning Sony’s stake will be worth 1.5% of the company. Epic Games has announced it will offer no less than $100 million in prize money in the 2018-19 season, and Fortnite will award up to $500,000 in cash prizes and $1 billion in-game prizes in 2019. With $200 million in prize money on offer, it ranks third overall in terms of what you can find, although its total prize money would probably be even higher.
In March 2019, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney reported that there are nearly 250 million Fortnite players. The last announcement came in March 2019, when he announced that the total number of “Fortnies” players had reached 250 million. This is the first time in the history of the game and represents a significant increase from the previous record of 200 million players in October 2018. In April this year, with the release of the latest update to the mobile app, Epic Games reported that it is now near the 250 million player mark, according to a report by Forbes.
Sony and Epic already have a close relationship, but this investment seems to take things to a new level, with both parties making somewhat cryptic statements. At this time Sony has invested a total of 450 million dollars in Epic Games and is working closely with the company on Unreal Engine 5. KitGuru says it looks like we can count on Sony and Unreal Games as partners in the future, as Sony has been a major investor in recent years. Sony has worked with Epic to optimize the Unreal engine for the new hardware architecture of the PS5, and at some point, they formed a close partnership with Epic. Epic has promoted the PlayStation 5 with demos of an early demo version of its updated engine with PS5 hardware and recently showcased it at E3, along with the upcoming Fallout 4 and Fallout New Vegas.
Epic Games is one of 11 companies selected to be part of the Disney Accelerator 2017 program, which is being provided by Disney executives. The money will help to expand their team and accelerate their research, enabling them to work with Disney in the future and play a key role in developing games and offering their game engine technology to other developers.