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PS5 Unreal Engine 5 Gameplay Demo is Playable

The PS5 gameplay demo developed using Unreal Engine 5 is playable, confirms Epic Games, after revealing the video at Summer Game Fest.

Epic Games confirms that its new Unreal Engine 5 demo is playable. Earlier today, Epic revealed the first Unreal Engine 5 demo of PS5 gameplay, showing fans and developers what could be possible with its new game development technology.

Speaking to Summer Game Fest creator Geoff Keighley after the Unreal Engine 5 reveal, Epic Games chief technology officer Kim Libreri said that it is a "fully playable demo." The team recorded it by putting it on a PS5 devkit and exporting it using a HDMI cable. Libreri also teased that the gameplay demo is "different every time you play it."


However, it seems unlikely that Epic Games will be developing the tech demo as a full game or that fans, who won't have access to a PS5 devkit, will be able to play it on PS5. Officially, the only Epic Games developed-title that will be coming to Unreal Engine 5 is Fortnite, which will be moved over to the technology in 2021.


Epic has also confirmed that Fortnite will be a PS5 and Xbox Series X launch title, making the multiplayer hit Epic's only announced game for next-generation consoles. The company did release its Unreal Engine 4 demo, Infiltrator, after showing it at GDC 2013 but this is only available from the Epic Games Launcher on PC.

It could also be a while until gamers get to enjoy PS5 and Xbox Series X games that have been developed on Unreal Engine 5. Games like Godfall, which is a confirmed PS5 launch title, is being developed on Unreal Engine 4. Epic Games has also said that Unreal Engine 5 will not be available to preview until early 2021 before it is released in full later in the year. Any larger games which could really use the Unreal Engine 5's tools may take a while to develop and are not expected to be available for some time.

This doesn't mean that next-gen games developed on other game engines won't look incredible, though, and Microsoft has given fans a glimpse of what to expect in the Xbox Series X gameplay reveal. Games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla were criticized for not showing true gameplay, heads-up display and all, during the event but their trailers did feature real-time, in-engine scenes. This suggests that while Unreal Engine 5-developed games are a long time away from being ready, the specs of the two next-gen consoles means that great graphics will be possible from launch.

Epic Games CEO Says PlayStation 5 SSD is 'Far Ahead' High-End PCs

Following the Unreal Engine 5 presentation during Geoff Keighley's Summer Games Fest, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney discusses the power of the PS5 SSD.

With E3 2020 no longer happening due to the current global pandemic, Geoff Keighley came to the rescue and announced his own Summer Game Fest event which would run over the course of the Summer months and deliver news, game reveals, and new gameplay. His first show kicked off earlier today by revealing the impressive first look at Unreal Engine 5 through a PS5 tech demo with a few members of Epic Games. Following the stunning reveal,a bit more information surrounding the technology came to light.

In a followup interview after the Lumen in the Land of Nanite tech demo, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney discussed how the engineers were able to get the UE5 engine to perform at this sort of level on the PlayStation 5 hardware. Sweeney's response highlighted the console's customized solid-state drive, which could be a game changers for developers within the next console generation.

tim sweeney epic games

The device itself was revealed earlier in March during Mark Cerny's GDC Deep Dive presentation into the hardware and specs of the PlayStation 5. During that presentation, Cerny confirmed that the SSD targets storage bandwidth at least 5GB per second, an incredible jump from the PlayStation 4 hard drive which is only able to do 50-100 megabytes per second. For the Epic Games demo, this enables them to not just utilize more polygons and memory, but to also load a large amount of polygons in every frame as players walk around. That level of detail just isn't possible without the customized SSD.

epic games unreal engine 5 ps5 demo
Sweeney was so impressed by the SSD architecture that he even admitted that the PS5 storage architecture is far ahead of the current best SSD solutions available today on a personal computer. Naturally, this advancement will also likely push the high-end PC market in the next couple of years as well.

"The PS5 puts a vast amount of flash memory very, very close to the processor. So much that it really fundamentally changes the trade-offs that games can make and stream in. And that’s absolutely critical to this kind of demo."

For all the talk about the PlayStation 5, naturally the conversation veered towards Microsoft's Xbox Series X. However, Sweeney wouldn't comment about any potential performance differences between the two consoles, only confirming that the features shown today are going to work on all next-generation consoles.

Hardware specs for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X have been highly compared and contrasted by the community. In fact, Microsoft's own Phil Spencer admitted after Mark Cerny's presentation that he feels good about the choices his team made for their platform. Both consoles have their advantages and disadvantages, but figuring out which console will be stronger likely won't be obvious on day 1. Much of that also lies in games and which really take advantage of the new technologies in both platforms, an area where Microsoft has been looking to improve in especially when compared to Sony's big first party studios.

The PS5 and the Xbox Series X release holiday 2020.