Havok, Epic Unveil NGP Support

Two major tech firms have stepped forward to back Sony's new handheld: Epic Games says developers can now license Unreal Engine 3 for NGP, and Havok says its full tools suite will support the platform as well. Epic says its founder Tim Sweeney first unveiled a tech demo of UE3 running on the platform in Tokyo in January, with particle systems, character animations and lighting effects in place. The company says many UE3 licensees are already developing NGP games with its engine. "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," says Epic VP Mark Rein. Sweeney called the device "a true game-changer." Animation and physics middleware provider Havok said its software builds are already ready and its support team prepared for NGP developers, as an extension on a "long history" of working closely together with Sony. Havok says "a number of key launch titles" for the handheld use its products. "Havok's suite of tools and targeted optimization for NGP will ensure that developers have best-of-breed production solutions on SCE's exciting new platform," said Havok managing director David Coghlan. Recent weeks have seen numerous well-known tools and middleware solutions providers such as NaturalMotion, Trinigy, Terminal Reality, Firelight and Audiokinetic tout support for NGP.