Unreal Engine 3 Shows Off the Power of the PSP 2

Epic Games has announced that the widely used Unreal Engine 3 technology has been adapted by the company to run on the upcoming PlayStation Portable 2 handheld, the one that Sony insists on calling the Next Generation Portable.

The company offered a presentation for all the developers that are interested in using Unreal Engine 3 on the PSP 2, showing off character animations, lightning effects, a full particle system and the fluid movement in a large, open world space.

Mark Rein, one of the vice presidents of Epic Games, stated, “We were very proud to be onstage with SCE to give the world just a taste of what Unreal Engine 3 can do on NGP.”

He added, “NGP raises the bar for the performance of handheld platforms with its multi-core GPU and shader-based, multi-core CPU. This makes Unreal Engine 3 a particularly advantageous fit for NGP. Furthermore, multiple UE3 licensees are already working with NGP, some of which have indicated they intend to release their games for the platform's launch.”

Unreal Engine 3 is widely used by current generation video games on the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC, mainly because it saves development money for companies and because it can be adapted for use for a wide variety of game genres.

The Hacok physics engine has also been announced as working on the PSP 2.

The fact that the Unreal Engine 3 works on the PlayStation Portable 2 is a testament to the processing power that the new handheld will pack, described by Sony as offering game experiences similar to those seen on the PlayStation 3 but on a smaller screen.

Sony has not said exactly when the PSP 2 is released, but the company has suggested that at least one market, probably the home Japanese one, will get the device before the end of 2011.