Epic Games‘ successor to Unreal Engine 5, the engine that currently powers an unfathomable number of modern 3D video games, has officially been revealed thanks to an announcement during this year’s Rocket League Championship Series. And given the time and place, it’s unsurprising that the first game confirmed to be getting the Unreal Engine 6 treatment is none other than Rocket League.
Although it’s the smallest of glimpses, developer Psyonix debuted a look at footage of the long-running vehicular football game in its Unreal Engine 6 form, reportedly running in real-time and looking like a clear upgrade in graphical technology over the current version, which runs a full three generations behind on Unreal Engine 3.
In the trailer below, you can see the very first glimpses of Rocket League running in UE6, though it’s still unclear whether this is an entirely new SKU/sequel for the decade-old game or if the current game is being updated to the new engine for everybody:
We also still know very little about the engine itself, outside of this first look at the logo, and what we’ve already learned in the past. Discussing UE6 on the Lex Fridman Podcast last year, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney revealed that the new engine would aim to unify the company’s internal and external efforts. This means bringing together the Unreal Editor for Fortnite and the wider, developer-facing side of the engine through Epic’s in-house programming language, Verse.
We can also see, in the above trailer, what appears to be a tease of a new, unified hub for Fortnite, LEGO Fortnite, Rocket League and more, though again there’s not much other information to go off aside from the video and speculation.
What do you think of this first look at UE6? Let us know in the comments or on our social pages!