‘2015 was the best year ever for Unreal’

Epic Games’ claims that Unreal has enjoyed the most successful year since its inception 20 years ago.

During yesterday’s GDC 2016 keynote, CEO Tim Sweeney listed some of the most profitable franchises that have been built on Unreal Engine from the beginning.

“[Since going free at GDC 2015] 1.5m users have chosen Unreal, making it the fastest growing engine in the games industry,” he told attendees.

“At least seven franchises have grossed more than $1bn dollars each, all entirely powered by the Unreal: Gears of War, Batman, Borderlands, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell and Lineage. And that’s not just history, because 2015 was the best year ever for Unreal Engine, both for developers and Epic Games itself. We have seen breakout hits from indies and pros on all platforms – mobile, VR, PC and console.”

Sweeney also announced that Unreal Engine was the first toolset of its kind to officially support the Vulkan API, the new standard in mobile graphics and successor to WebGL.

Another highlight of Epic’s briefing was a real-time demo of performance capture in Ninja Thoery’s Hellblade – seemingly retitled Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.

The demo showed a digital version of Senua reacting to the movements of actress Melina Jurgens, who was fitted with both mo-cap and facial performance capture rigs for the purpose of the show. Jurgens was able to act and react to the scene, as well as the show’s presenter, in real-time with the on-screen demo replicating her movements instantaneously.