Disney buys into Epic Games & the 'Frame' - MetaVisions #17
Davi de Andrade
February 09, 2024
Hi everyone, hope you’re all doing fantastic. Disney made an interesting announcement during their most recent earnings call, hinting at future plans. In addition to this, a start up has announced a new AR smart glass that seems super impressive.
Disney acquires Epic Games stake
The entertainment and IP titan has recently invested $1.5 billion in Epic Games, a gaming studio mostly known for releasing Fortnite. Disney’s vision for this investment is the creation of a games and entertainment universe, which will be interoperable with Fortnite.
“Disney was one of the first companies to believe in the potential of bringing their worlds together with ours in Fortnite, and they use Unreal Engine across their portfolio,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder, Epic Games. “Now we’re collaborating on something entirely new to build a persistent, open and interoperable ecosystem that will bring together the Disney and Fortnite communities.” - Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder, Epic Games
Most of you will know Fortnite as this Battle-Royale game that had a rapid ascension into the highest places of the gaming industry. However, Fortnite has transformed itself into much more than that…
Users are able to create their own worlds with customized maps, characters and even their own code to create completely bespoke experiences, all of this using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite.
Epic Games launched an innovative creator economy where user-generated content can be rewarded with millions of dollars, creating a great ecosystem inside the Fortnite universe.
Artists such as Travis Scott, Kid Cudi and Marshmello have collaborated with Epic Games to launch their in-game experiences that has millions of players participating in them.
Some of the world’s biggest IPs such as Batman, Star Wars, Spider-man have released special collectible in-game items such as skins and weapon camos in the game.
Epic Games has managed to create a platform where it allows a brilliant ecosystem to shine. Where can Disney fit into all of this?
I believe that in a first instance, there will be special game modes, maps, in-game cosmetics, that will take advantage of the wide IP inventory that Disney now owns through their acquisitions over the last 20 years. All of this launched on Fornite.
A shared universe, where users can hop from all these different experiences whilst still making use of in-game collectibles that they have acquired.
What if your glasses gave you AI superpowers?
This is the slogan that is being used by Brillant Labs, a start-up that wants to empower humanity through AR, AI and an open-source platform. Honestly, that slogan is not too far-fetched, today they announced their new product that will start shipping in April, the ‘Frame’.
A multi-modal AI powered glass that has a built-in AR Oled display, a successor to their first product, the Monacle, which was a single clip-on AR display that could also make use of AI.
The Monacle
‘Frame is designed to be worn as a pair of glasses with a suite of AI capabilities out of the box. Whether your daily pair of specs of workbench prototyping tool, Frame is ready for the journey.’
Frame is designed to fit most people. The device weighs just less than 40g and, at estimated normal use, can achieve all-day battery life together with Mister Power (included). A bright microOLED is bonded to a thin geometric prism optic to display ~20 degree diagonal field of view. Frame is totally open source, design files and code are on Github.
The Frame promises interesting features through Multi-modal AI and AR such as:
Visual recognition - eg describing landmarks
Translation - eg translating the signs you look at. At some point, live ‘subtitles’ for translating conversations too!
Nutrition - eg showing nutritional values of the food you are going to eat.
AI web search
Image generation
What is most surprising for me is the launch price of $418.
I am looking at my Amex, this is tempting!
The future is not Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, it will be devices like the Frame that can easily be added into people’s everyday life.
See you next week,
Davi, MetaVisions
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