Last week LEGO and Epic Games announced a partnership to make the metaverse – whatever it turns out to be – better for kids. Now today we have news of a separate venture in terms of financial investment, which also includes Sony.
KIRKI, the holding company of LEGO, and Sony, have both invested $1 billion each into Epic Games with the intent of building metaverse content and general continued growth of the company.
“All three companies highly value both creators and players, and aim to create new social entertainment exploring the connection between digital and physical worlds. Epic continues to have only a single class of common stock outstanding and remains controlled by its CEO and founder, Tim Sweeney,” the announcement reads.
It’s still a bit strange that Epic Games is accepting investments as it’s seemingly making all the money it needs from Fortnite alone, so what is this $2 billion going to be used for?
The announcement doesn’t specifically say but Kenichiro Yoshida, President and CEO of Sony Group Corporation, hopes it will “deepen our relationship in the metaverse field” as well as help development on Sony ventures regarding Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.
From LEGO’s side it seems much of a repeat of the previous partnership news with the intent to mould the metaverse into something kid-focused.
“A proportion of our investments is focused on trends we believe will impact the future world that we and our children will live in. This investment will accelerate our engagement in the world of digital play, and we are pleased to be investing in Epic Games to support their continued growth journey, with a long-term focus toward the future metaverse,” writes Søren Thorup Sørensen, CEO of KIRKBI.
Lastly it’s worth mentioning that there is still no actual “metaverse”, a fact that many people forget. All this money is being thrown around when there’s still no central game or software or platform called metaverse or anything close to it. Meta, which is usually credited for planting this idea in the imagination of the world, doesn’t have a functional product for people to use.
It just seems strange that this massive bandwagon is attracting more money than the entirety of some countries for some nebulous idea that hasn’t yet been realised.
