Gameloft has today announced that they have partnered with Epic Games to bring four games to mobile devices using Unreal Engine 3. The game engine will power two games this year and two aimed for release in 2012.

Unreal Engine 3, which was released late last year, was the game engine that powered the tech demo of Epic Citadel as well as Epic Games very succesful Infinity Blade.  The Unreal Development Kit is free for developers to download and try, but if used they must pay a $99 licensing fee and a 25% royalty fee after the first $50,000 in sales.

Gameloft and Epic Games didn’t elaborate on what the games using the engine would be or whether they brokered a different licensing agreement, however Gameloft’s vice president of production, Julien Fournials said that;

Gameloft is very pleased to partner with Epic, especially with their ability to stay ahead of the curve and continually place the best game engine technology in developers’ hands at any given point in time. Using Unreal Engine 3 allows us to push game visuals with remarkable lighting and high-fidelity environments. We are confident that players will enjoy the games powered by Unreal Engine 3.

With the 2011 Game Developers Conference underway, Gameloft writes on their blog to “stay tuned for more”, hopefully we’ll get a taste of what these new games will entail.

[Via Gameloft Blog]

Thanks @eych for technical correction regarding license fee threshold information.