14 DAY TRIAL // Unreal Engine 4 is not yet ready for primetime, but one of the leading executives at developer Epic Games says that it can deliver experiences that are already more impressive than the Samaritan tech demo shown last year.
Mark Rein, who is one of the vice presidents at Epic Games in charge of the development of next-generation technology, told Shacknews that, “If Samaritan looked like a piece of crap, that’s what Unreal Engine 4 would look like. Our goal with Samaritan was to show you the future. It came a lot sooner than we expected.”
The executive says that the pace of hardware development during the last year has been so high that the Samaritan demo, which was running on a custom machine which had three graphic cards in 2011, can now be launched on a machine using just one high-end graphics processing unit.
Rein believes that if the pace keeps up, then the same demo might be launched on a laptop next year.
The fact that PC hardware is progressing so fast means that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, the three companies that will be launching next-gen console hardware, need to deliver gaming platforms that are even more powerful.
Rein says, “We are absolutely every day. This is why we did Samaritan and why we’re doing a really high-end demo in the room here. We really are pushing these guys, because if they don’t, Apple will go right past them.”
The executive believes that the next generation of consoles could actually be the last one if the companies fail to create a gaming experience that favorably compares with what gamers can get on the PC.
At the moment neither Sony nor Microsoft has officially talked about a PlayStation 4 or a Xbox 720, but rumors suggest that both manufacturers might unveil new platforms before the end of the year and will launch them in 2013.
Nintendo will be getting the new Wii U to market during the final half of this year.