News Mash-Up - Week # 14

Top News Items

• • In a stunning 37 min video on YouTube, Epic revealed and released the Unreal Engine 5 to any developer for free. The off-the-shelf product comes with pre-built assets, in-house support, and guidance. New features include “Lumen” which allows for photorealistic dynamic lighting and “Nanite” which allows for efficient landscape design. Epic released City Sample, which is essentially the city from The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience project and Lyra which is a blueprint multiplayer game (in the vein of Fortnite) to allow developers to build upon these pre-built blueprints.

  • Epic also announced the following in a statement from its website: “The LEGO Group and Epic Games today announced they are entering a long-term partnership to shape the future of the metaverse to make it safe and fun for children and families. The two companies will team up to build an immersive, creatively inspiring and engaging digital experience for kids of all ages to enjoy together.” Epic obviously has its sights on Roblox with the creation of its own metaverse universe, aiming specifically at a younger audience.

  • Call of Duty and Fortnite content creator Ali-A (Alastair Aiken) has teamed up with YouTube to unearth a new wave of influencers via a talent show. The competition, which starts in June, is called uTure and it has a grand prize of $100k. Ten applicants will face weekly content creation challenges over nine weeks and the winner will walk away with the prize and most likely a YouTube Games contract.

  • The Fortnite appeal for Ukraine has raised an astonishing $144 million. The final total was raised from two weeks' worth of profits from Fortnite, plus all of Microsoft's proceeds it would normally take via Xbox. In other Ukrainian news of note - Riot has donated $5.4 million raised from battle pass sales from multiple games to support humanitarian relief. Former Belarusian company (now registered as Cypriot) company Wargaming, the developer of the online military games World of..(Tanks, Warships, Warplanes), has announced that it will pull out of operations in Russia and Belarus.

  • Although Ubisoft announced it will be closing support for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the very first game it used for its NFT launch, the company has stated it will roll out more NFTs for its other games in the near future.

  • Ubisoft announced Rainbow Six Mobile with live tests for the title slated to begin within the next few weeks.

  • The troubled release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition has not fazed Rockstar who announced a remaster of Max Payne. The remake will be a single game that encompasses both Max Payne and Max Payne 2. The game will be available for the PS5, Xbox Series and PC. No release date announced.

  • The opening weekend box-office for Sonic The Hedgehog 2 movie has generated more money than the first film. The new film is projected to have made up to $69 million compared to the original’s debut weekend of $58 million in February 2020.
    
    
    

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Week commencing Monday 11 April 2022