Apple will release a DirectX 11-capable device in a few years, said Epic VP Mark Rein in an interview with trade magazine Develop. Rein also said that Unreal Engine on DX11 is a big enough technical leap to justify the cost of developing next generation consoles. Rein's comments follow the unveiling of a new tech demo at the 2011 Game Developers Conference. The “Samaitan real-time demo” shows off the kinds of DX11eye candy developers can expect to produce with the updated Unreal Development Kit. “The DX11 demo itself, that's our love letter to hardware manufacturers. We're able to give people another road map. If companies are building new consoles - and, who knows, I mean Apple just released an iPad that's nine times the power of its predecessor,” said Rein. Above: The Unreal Engine 3 Samaritan Real-Time Demo, which was first revealed at the 2011 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco “If Apple continues on this scale, they'll have a device that can run this [points to Unreal Engine DX11 demo] in a couple of years. But, that demo we've shown is aimed at the game console makers. We're telling them that this is the big leap that we think justifies that new piece of hardware you're going to build, and we're telling them that this is what we need next-gen consoles to be capable of, because we can't build a more powerful PC than the one that's running the DX11 demo! [Laughs]” he continued.
