Lego Fortnite is barely two months previous, however Epic Video games is already out with an excellent greater collaboration.
Epic and Disney introduced as we speak that the businesses will accomplice on an “all-new video games and leisure universe” that may carry characters from Disney’s deep catalogue to life by means of Fortnite.
The scope of the mission sounds large, to say the least. In a press launch, the businesses described the forthcoming mission as “an all-new video games and leisure universe” providing gamers a technique to “play, watch, store and interact with” characters and storylines from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar. The collaboration will use Epic’s Unreal Engine and might be “interoperable” with Fortnite, tying into Epic’s present on-line social gaming infrastructure.
“This marks Disney’s greatest entry ever into the world of video games and provides important alternatives for development and enlargement,” Disney CEO Bob Iger stated of the partnership. Disney may also take a $1.5 billion fairness stake in Epic Video games as a part of the deal.
The Disney collaboration comes as a shock, however matches proper into Epic’s present roadmap. Epic has been increasing the previous’s scope lately. What started as a preferred battle royale recreation (technically a player-versus-environment recreation earlier than that, if we’re nitpicking) has exploded right into a hub of user-generated recreation modes and model collaborations.
In December, Epic additional signaled its dedication to develop Fortnite past its roots as a multiplayer shooter with the addition of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Competition — three full standalone video games in utterly totally different genres than the unique Fortnite.
The mission doesn’t but have a launch date past “quickly(ish),” which suggests gamers gained’t be in for a multi-year wait on the formidable collaboration, which apparently grew out of Epic’s time in a Disney Accelerator program again in 2017. Disney and Epic additionally already work carefully on model collaborations inside Fortnite, and plenty of well-liked characters from Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe can be found as collectible in-games skins.