The Fight For Metaverse Dominance: Unity Versus Unreal Engine – Who Wins?

You watch your friend tumble from the sky.

His jetpack spits out whatever gusts of wind are still in its chamber, but it’s not enough. His head tilts down, and like an arrow just beginning to feel the touch of gravity, he accelerates toward the red-dusted floor. Rocks just from the surface. You know he won’t survive the impact. You utter a violent scream, hoping that somehow your voice would carry a mattress to soften the landing. You run towards him. Maybe, you think, you could grab him just before he falls. Still, you’re screaming.

You hear your wife’s voice telling you to be quiet. You place your hands on your head and feel the straps of your virtual reality headset. You slip your fingers between the straps and tear the headset off your face. “You did it again,” she says. “You’re going to wake the neighbors.” Far from being an excerpt from a science fiction novel, many think this passage will soon describe real-life events of the Metaverse, a third world where virtual and physical realities meld into one. 

In the last year, the world has witnessed several of the Metaverse’s many forms. Justin Beiber Ariana Grande and Travis Scott have shown the Metaverse’s ability to mitigate physical boundaries by allowing users to virtually interact in hyper-realistic concerts. Digital stores in the Metaverse, which have won over brands like Nike Inc. NKE and Dolce & Gabanna, have shown how the Metaverse can be another venue for digitalized commercial products. 

The Metaverse’s immense commercial prowess and growth potential have invited a fight amongst the creators building the world of the future. Two strong contenders in this space are Unity Software Inc. U and Unreal Engine. According to Dizraptor analysts, there’s one clear winner in the race, and the pre-IPO investing platform can give investors early opportunity to capitalize on the growth of the world’s next biggest 3D creator for the Metaverse.

The Metaverse & The Role Of Creators In Its Rise

Experts have linked Metaverse to gaming, communication, entertainment, work, advertising and creation, touching upon nearly every aspect of everyday life. Businesses and entrepreneurs have already begun leveraging this exciting idea while it’s still in its infancy.

In 2021, 600 pairs of virtual sneakers from RTFKT Studios (now owned by Nike) were sold out in 7 minutes and brought in $3.1 million. During the nine-minute digital concert, which was held in April 2020, Travis Scott earned $20M including merchandise sales. In comparison, Scott’s four-month-long, 56-stop Astroworld tour from 2018 to 2019 garnered approximately $53.5M, or roughly just under $1M per show. 

While the technology remains in its early stages, the entrepreneurial crown is still up for grabs, and people everywhere are scrambling to snatch it. Amongst the most promising candidates in this search are the creators of the worlds themselves. Like every house needs an architect and an engineer, every Metaverse will need creators to form the components of virtual worlds. Not only that – the components need to be extremely well-made for the Metaverse to sustain a “real-world feel.”

That caliber of talent in 3D creation is scarce, but Unity Software and Unreal Engine have stood out amongst the rest. Both companies have created an incredible creation-driven infrastructure, suctioning a talented workforce and leveraging it to pump out innovations. Unity’s augmented-reality twist to Pokemon Go, for example, reached millions across the globe. Similarly, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine platform helped shape Fortnite, one of the world’s most successful metaverse games to date.

Who Takes It Home? 

Both Unity and Epic Games are successful and popular game studios specializing in the creation of Metaverse components like 3D objects, augmented reality (AR), extended reality (XR) and virtual reality (VR). 

Photo from Jon Radoff’s Medium

They differ mostly in the roles they play in the “Layers of the Metaverse,” – a term dubbed by Jon Radoff – and in how they monetize their creative efforts. If you were to think of the Metaverse as a 7-layer lasagna, its components would be composed of the following: 

• Infrastructure: The foundational components of the Metaverse, which include 5G, WiFi and Cloud Services.
• Human Interface: The hardware components of the Metaverse, including mobiles, wearables and haptics.
• Decentralization: The technology that ushers Metaverse components away from centrality, including blockchain and artificial intelligence.
• Spatial Computing: The tools to generate realistic physical-virtual worlds and the interconnectivity between those two domains.
• Creator Economy: The infrastructure to incentivize creators via monetization through design tools, asset markets, and general commerce.
• Discovery: The social component of the Metaverse, bringing stakeholders together through communication structures like ads, social gatherings, stores and others.
• Experience: The tangible Metaverse products like games, social applications and digital shopping platforms.

Unity and Epic Games operate at different stacks of the Metaverse Lasagna. Because Unreal Engine creates its own games, for example, it fits within the “Experience” layer of the Metaverse Lasagna, while Unity does not because it does not sell games. The two also differ in which areas they specialize in within the Layers. For example, both projects are active in the “Discovery” phase, but Unity allows discovery via advertisements while Unreal Engine promotes discovery through in-game stores, social curation and ratings. 

A list of each project’s pros and cons is beyond the scope of this article, but what can be said is that these projects have already played massive roles in the Metaverse’s rise. Until recently, considering which company would be a better investment was moot since Unity is publicly-traded while Epic Games is not. Luckily, this imbalance was leveled by Dizraptor, an app for investing in private companies.

At the time, Dizraptor team invested in companies such as Airbnb Inc. ABNB and Coursera (COUR). Recently, the app's investors received indirect access to an investment in SpaceX. Сurrently they focus on the metaverse industry.

According to Dizraptor, an early exposure to Epic Games is an exclusive opportunity to diversify one’s portfolio with a key player in the metaverse and Web3. The offering is available to accredited investors starting at $1000

Sign up for the app to invest in the core of the metaverse! 

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.

Featured Photo by Mediamodifier on Unsplash