Unreal Engine 6 gets 2027 “Early Access” launch with “full release” by mid-2029
Unreal Engine 6 will enter early access next year
Following last month’s confirmation of Rocket League’s upcoming Unreal Engine 6 upgrade, Epic Games has officially confirmed that Unreal Engine 6 will be launching in “Early Access” by the end of 2027.
In a blog post on Epic Games’ website, Marcus Wassmer, Epic’s EVP of development, has unveiled new details about the new engine. Following 12-18 months of early access, Unreal Engine 6 should receive its “full release” by mid-2029. This engine will merge Unreal Engine 5 and Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN) into a single editor. The new engine will also focus on improving how games are made, rather than delivering new graphical features.
With Unreal Engine 6, many older Unreal Engine elements will be getting retired and replaced with new, more modern alternatives. Hopefully, these changes will result in more performant games and an Unreal Engine better suited to developing modern games.
Unreal Engine 6 will feature a new gameplay framework called “Scene Graph”, which has been built from scratch using Verse, the new foundation of Epic Games’ programming model. This next-generation programming language is purpose-built to power “massive, persistent game worlds at scale”, seemingly solving some of Unreal Engine 5’s biggest problems.
A transition from Unreal Engine 5 to Unreal Engine 6
Moving from Unreal Engine 5 to 6 will be harder than the shift from Unreal Engine 4 to 5. That said, Epic Games will have conversion tools to help developers migrate to its newer frameworks. Epic Games currently plans to end development of Unreal Engine 5 with version 5.8. However, the company are “reserving the option to release 5.9, if needed”.
Epic has confirmed that it plans to move Fortnite to Unreal Engine 5. Note that this means that Fortnite and Rocket League will likely be Unreal Engine 6’s first games.
Epic Games plans to share more details about Unreal Engine 6 as it approaches its early access period. This includes deep dives into their new gameplay framework, verse, and scene graphs.
You can join the discussion on Epic Games’ next-generation Unreal Engine version on the OC3D Forums.
