Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 enters early access, check out this demo captured on Xbox Series X and PS5

Epic Games’s brand new Unreal Engine 5 is now available in early access for all game developers. The Unreal Engine 5 will support all existing platforms including last-get consoles and mobile platforms, but Epic showed today new UE5 footage captured on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 and things are looking really good.

“This Early Access build of Unreal Engine 5 is not production-ready, but this is where, for the first time, you can get your hands on some of the technology that caused so much excitement when it was showcased in last year’s announcement—not to mention some you’ve never seen before,” Epic said today. The first UE5 demo captured on PlayStation 5 last year was pretty short, but the 15 minutes video below goes more in-depth on the possibilities for creating incredibly detailed worlds.

A couple of developers have already announced upcoming games being developed with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, such as Ninja Theory with Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. The Coalition, the Microsoft studio behind the Gears of War series also recently announced that it was using Unreal Engine 5 for “multiple new projects,” and that probably includes the unannounced Gears 6.

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 currently powers many blockbuster games including Fortnite, PUBG, Sea of Thieves, or Borderlands 3, and it will be interesting to see how the first Unreal Engine 5 games will look like. In recent years, the Unreal Engine has also been used in movies and TV shows such as The Mandalorian and Westworld.

“We are hoping to ship the full release in early 2022 with many memory, performance, and quality improvements, as well as additional new features that will benefit creators in all industries,” Epic Games said today. You can learn more details on the Unreal Engine 5 Early Access on this page.