Unity Acquires Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for $1.625 Billion

[Tsing]

Image: 20th Century Studios



Unity, the company behind the popular real-time game engine of the same name, has purchased Weta Digital for $1.625 billion. This is the renowned, New Zealand-based VFX house that was behind the Oscar-winning effects on hit film franchises such as The Lord of the Rings and James Cameron’s Avatar. Weta Digital was co-founded by director Peter Jackson.









From the Unity blog:



Today, Unity announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Weta Digital, specifically its artist tools, core pipeline, intellectual property, and award-winning engineering talent. The Academy Award-Winning VFX service teams of Weta Digital will continue as a standalone entity known as WetaFX and will become Unity’s largest customer in the Media and Entertainment space. By combining the industry leading VFX tools and technical...

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[GunShot]

Just more useless tech that we'll never see in REAL games but it makes for cool "this could happen" demos, though.

 

[Grimlakin]

Just another nail in the gaming is more profitable than movie making.