Shacknews had the opportunity to sit down on a private, invite-only press conference with Epic Games. At one point during the presentation, the Unreal Engine 4 logo appeared on the screen. (It's blue now, FYI.) Epic Games' Mark Rein told us that the company was showing off its next-generation engine at Game Developers Conference--but only to developers. The public reveal will happen later this year, Rein reconfirmed.

But what is Unreal Engine 4? And how does it compare to Samaritan, the high-powered Unreal Engine 3 demo that's been shown off for years? "If Samaritan looked like a piece of crap, that's what Unreal Engine 4 would look like," Rein told us.

Read more: Samaritan coming to PCs in the near future »

In 2010, Epic Games released the Epic Citadel tech demo to show off what the Unreal Engine could do on an iPhone. Now, it's re-released that same demo running in a web browser on Flash 11, for you to have a look yourself. Epic also showed off Unreal Tournament 3 and Dungeon Defenders running in Flash, with only a moderate performance hit.

Read more: Runs at around 70% of regular performance »