Epic's Mark Rein "very impressed" with iPad's game demos

Epic's Mark Rein was present for Apple's iPad event yesterday and just happened to mention that a working demo of Unreal Engine 3 already runs on iPhone 3GS, so it should run on the new product as well.

While Rein was non-committal regarding a version of  UR3 made specifically for iPad, he did admit that he was impressed with the game demos.

"I am really impressed with the iPad," Rein told Kotaku. "The quality of the materials is outstanding. The screen is amazing and the super-sized apps were fantastic. Everything seems to perform really well on the iPad and I was blown away by the iWork apps - I thought bringing those to iPad was a brilliant move by Apple.

"I was very impressed with the game demos. I was surprised how good they were considering they only had a few weeks with the device. I think iPad will be great for gaming and I suspect we'll see many games that make use of the differentiated form factor of the iPad.

"Apple has done a great job at constantly improving the user experience on Mac and iPhone so I can only imagine where this platform can go in the future."

Apple's iPad was finally revealed yesterday, and opinions on the new device seem to be split equally both ways, especially since iPad costs between $500 - $830, depending on storage size and if you want 3G capabilities or not.

While some analysts remain unconvinced of its gaming prospects, iPad does do gaming, and you can see for yourself through a video over on Joystiq, which also notes that iPhone games and iPad games will not be cross-compatible.

We'll just have to wait and see what third-parties come up with for it, and since iPad just came out of the oven, so to speak, it could take a while before it gains a foot-hold in gaming.