Epic Games is rolling out the latest major update to Unreal Engine 5 today, and at the same time, the company also dropped some information on the next-generation version of the product, Unreal Engine 6. This was already revealed a few weeks ago alongside the new Rocket League upgrade reveal.
The company says it is combining the features of Unreal Engine and Unreal Editor for Fortnite to create this new version of its popular media creation tool. On top of creating entire games, the new engine will also focus on letting developers operate large-scale live service titles more easily, whether by shipping content into their own ecosystems or into Fortnite.
The use of large language models is also mentioned here, with Epic saying it will be a core part of the engine. "We see LLMs, generative AI models, and tools like Claude and Codex playing a central role in helping you build content faster while maintaining the creative control you need," adds the company.
Here is the rundown of what's new about version 6 of Unreal Engine:
- We’re moving the gameplay programming model to Verse, which transactionalizes C++, for increased accessibility of development and so that we can build persistent, large-scale, live experiences with thousands of contributors.
- We’re enabling content, code, and economies to become portable and interoperable across games, ecosystems, and engines through open standards, to enable developer collaboration on much greater scales than ever before.
- We’re building development pipeline features such as an MCP with integrations for Claude, Gemini, and others, as creativity and productivity multipliers so that teams can focus their efforts on the essential creative and technical tasks of development rather than time on time-consuming manual tasks.
With all these changes to the programming model, portability upgrades, and generative AI integration, Epic says the new version of the engine will "change a lot about how games are made." The company aims to ship Unreal Engine 6 into early access in late 2027, with a full release planned for 12-18 months later.
Epic Games also dropped a lengthy blog post about the new Unreal Engine 5.8 update for game developers over here. The release is focused on delivering better performance, customization, and streamlined workflows for development teams. This will be the final major update for this version of the engine before Epic switches to focus fully on Unreal Engine 6's early access launch.
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