Epic: Unreal Engine 4 may debut in 2012

Epic Games may be ready to unveil its Unreal Engine 4 technology before 2013, says the company's vice president Mark Rein. While many didn't expect to see the tech before 2014, Rein says “people are going to be shocked later this year” when they see the capabilities of the new engine. Last year, the company used existing tech to put together a realtime demo of what to expect from future hardware paired with the Unreal Engine:

Rein's almost-canonical projection for the unveiling of future tech sits pretty well with all those incessant rumors about the PS4 and Xbox 720 and so forth. Built with the next generation of consoles in mind, a new Unreal Engine would be in a fine position to have the “profound effect” Rein foresees it causing within the industry. Rein's also said to have commented that Unreal's currently running UE4 on “systems we can't name yet” – but whether that means the PlayStation 4 or just a new internal dev PC that no-one's thought of a cute nickname for yet, we'll leave to you to decide.