Epic Games was in attendance at Sony's unveiling of the NGP last month with a tech demo on the device, and now they have officially confirmed that the Unreal Engine 3 will fully support Sony's NGP. With this confirmation, developers are now able to license out the engine and start creating for the upcoming portable device.

The tech demo shown at the NGP reveal, which was presented by founder of Epic Games Tim Sweeney, was an outdoor experience that echoed the outdoor setting in their iOS title Infinity Blade and iOS demo Epic Citadel.

The Gears of War studio is excited for the potential of the NGP and how it will affect gaming in the near future. Mark Rein, vice president for Epic Games, shared his thoughts on how the NGP will be a huge deal with the evolution of gaming.

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. 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.

Sweeney also shares the same positivity with Sony's next piece of hardware.

We see NGP as a true game-changer with a perfect combination of performance, innovative controls and gamer appeal that make it truly a high-end console in your pocket.

The impressive quality of the Unreal Engine is evident and will surely benefit from being on the NGP platform for gamers and developers alike. With the recent release of Bulletstorm, and what we've seen with the anticipated release of Gears of Wars 3, it will be interesting to see what titles make their way to the NGP using the Unreal Engine.

The NGP is expected to hit shelves sometime this year, though no date has been confirmed.

Source: Industry Gamers