Psyonix gave everyone at this weekend’s Rocket League event in Paris a surprise when it debuted a new trailer showing off in-game footage using UE6. Rocket League has never made its way past Unreal Engine 3, despite much of the gaming industry using either the now four-year-old UE5 or at least UE4, so seeing the game running on the yet unreleased Unreal Engine 6 was a bit of a shocker.
“What. A. Moment. The crowd reacts to the new era of Rocket League.”
– Psyonix
As can be seen in the video, much of the crowd gave a standing ovation to the reveal. No details were provided regarding the hardware used for the in-game footage, but given the fast-paced nature of Rocket League, one would hope great effort is being put into optimizing it across multiple configurations and platforms. Unreal Engine 5 has not always had positive reviews in this respect, despite its ability to produce realistic visuals. Sadly, those visuals usually come with major performance hits, but it’s hoped that UE6 will focus more on optimizations than introducing new features.
Epic has not announced a release date for Unreal Engine 6, but could do so by the year’s end. It’s all but a given that it will be used by many game developers for the next generation of consoles since both Sony and Xbox have formally announced they have new hardware in development. Neither console manufacturer is expected to launch any new models before 2027, so we likely will not see any new games released using UE6 before then either. From Project Helix to the PlayStation 6, and possibly new GPUs by the time of their release, it will be interesting to see what Unreal Engine 6 has to offer. Meanwhile, Rocket League fans have been given a taste of what’s to come thanks to this new teaser trailer.
