Epic announced that Unreal Engine 6 is coming our way soon with Rocket League being the first game to make the transition, but what does that mean for games?
Epic has easily the biggest platform for game development with many games being supported by Unreal Engine, so when a new iteration releases it becomes a big deal. It seems like just yesterday that we were watching the Matrix demo showcasing the various features of Unreal Engine 5, and then games started to quickly get ported over with greatly improved visuals. But the reach of Unreal Engine has been expanding with several deals with publishers and developers, along with a broader reach in film to generate CG visuals. So this is a pretty big announcement by Epic.
Early builds of the engine typically go out before Epic says anything, which means dev teams, like the one behind Rocket League, likely had Unreal Engine 6 for upwards of a year by now. This is one of the shortest life cycles for their engine as they typically stay within a version for 4.5 to 7 years, with 6 to 9 month intervals for engine updates (which typically are intervals like 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 etc…) So while we might not expect UE6 to hit till around 2028, why is this cycle seemingly so short?
This is what we are reading, and while not confirmed by Epic yet, this seems interesting if true.
A quick answer appears to be a behind the scenes issue that Unreal Engine has been dealing with since Unreal Engine 3, threading. Threading is basically the engine’s ability to process things in order, or in multiple ways. UE5 is able to have multiple threads for several features including audio, physics, and even rendering, but the core logic of the engine still requires a single thread processing. This has been seen as a huge bottleneck for the engine which oftentimes creates the stuttering issue you see in many games, as the engine is bottleneck itself to one core on the processor and isn’t fully capable of utilizing multi-cores to process the logic.
This has led to many development issues behind the scenes where threads need to be redone or fully processed before editing, as well. Tim Sweeny has even publicly admitted that the single thread processing is the biggest issue with UE5, and is looking for ways to address it.
Rumors are suggesting UE6 big step up is the fact the engine will now have multi threading game logic. This is why they needed a full new number since transitioning games to this will take a lot of recoding and full porting, vs a simple interval update.
Other possible updates:
It is heavily rumored that UE6 will have a new “verse” coding language, which is different than relying on C++. The new language will allow the engine to code properly for multiplayer games, allowing real time updating without needing to recompile the engine.
Along the same lines, the engine is taking into account user generated content, and branded overall content. The theory is that the engine will easily be able to transition user content and branded content across various games and universes rather easily. A basic idea of this is using Fortnite to sell branded content, but then being able to take that content to another game like Rocket League.
All of this is yet to be confirmed, but the chatter is rather heavy on the Unreal forums and on “insider” channels, so there has to be some smoke and fire here. It seems that the engine is more exciting for developers than it is for fans so far, but that’s mostly because we got a ton of physics and visual clarity with UE5, and UE6 is just making it easier to make games with those features. Rocket League might even finally use Unreal Engine physics, something they avoided while being on UE3.
Meanwhile it might be too late for some other games that are heavily into their development cycles to fully transition to UE6, but Epic has been really good about getting developers on their engines. Games like The Witcher also use heavily modified versions of the engine, so this may not entirely impact The Witcher 4, but I’m sure some quality of life updates will hit their development cycle.
Typically Epic utilizes Fortnite, or their own game, to demonstrate their new engine capabilities, before Fornite they utilized Unreal Tournement. Along with that, the engine also typically follows a new generation of consoles which could be interesting for console fans. New engine’s require better hardware, so perhaps this is hinting that the console makers are indeed on releasing new hardware, a bit too soon.
