Sony Injects $250 Million into Epic Games

In the latest news of “rich dudes gettin’ richer,” Sony announced that they’re purchasing a $250 million minority stake in Epic Games, according to a joint announcement made by the two companies.

Sony had this to say about the purchase:

“Epic’s powerful technology in areas such as graphics places them at the forefront of game engine development with Unreal Engine and other innovations. There’s no better example of this than the revolutionary entertainment experience, Fortnite. Through our investment, we will explore opportunities for further collaboration with Epic to delight and bring value to consumers and the industry at large, not only in games, but also across the rapidly evolving digital entertainment landscape,”

And Epic Games responds with:

“Sony and Epic have both built businesses at the intersection of creativity and technology, and we share a vision of real-time 3D social experiences leading to a convergence of gaming, film, and music. Together we strive to build an even more open and accessible digital ecosystem for all consumers and content creators alike,”

For Epic Games, a $250 million cash injection is basically nothing – they make Fortnite, after all, and are valued at somewhere around $16 billion. But between this and the earlier PS5 tech demo that Epic Games threw together, this certainly seems to signal that Sony and Epic Games are snuggling up to each other pretty intensely. It’s hard to say right now what that means for Epic Games in the future – I very much doubt they’ll start making games exclusively for Sony any time soon, but one or two exclusives as a “thanks”? I could see that.

That said, it’s been a long time since Epic Games has worked on anything other than Fortnite. And since there’s no way in hell that’s going exclusive, we can only speculate what this will actually lead to.

If anything.

Might not lead to crap.