This generation Epic Games has become a leading force in licensing out engine tech — more specifically its Unreal Engine 3 middleware. Work has already begun on UE4, which comes as little surprise considering the company did offer a tease at what it called UE 3.5 back in March.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says UE4 will “probably” be ready around 2014, which just so happens to fit in with the expected timeline of the next generation of consoles.

Interestingly, the exec spends “around 60 percent” of his time on next-gen projects, making it clear that Epic is serious about maintaining its dominance in this space going forward. With stiff competition emerging from the likes of CryEngine 3, the pressure is on.

“This is technology that won’t see the light of day until probably around 2014, but focusing on that horizon enables me to do some really cool things that just aren’t practical today, but soon will be,” Sweeney told IGN.

He added, “Some of our most productive work in the industry was on the first Unreal engine back in 1996, when I wrote a software vendor with a bunch of new features that hadn’t been seen before. I feel like that’s what I’m doing now on Unreal Engine 4 in exploring areas of the technology nobody else is really yet contemplating because they’re still a few years away from practicality. But I see a huge amount of potential there and so it’s very, very fun work. “

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