The iPhone is already touted for its gaming prowess almost endlessly, but it looks like things are about to take a pretty big leap forward. Epic Games has been crackin’ away at an iPhone port of their Unreal Engine 3 — the engine that powers such jaw-droppingly beautiful games as BioShock, Mirror’s Edge, Gears of War 2, and a bunch of others — and they’re now far enough along that they’re looking to show it off.

The first person lucky enough to get some hands-on time with the engine was Anand over at Anandtech, who seems to have walked away impressed. The stuff we’ll see on the iPhone obviously aren’t going to be pixel-for-pixel matches with that found on the current generation of consoles; textures will be downsampled, lighting and shading effectswill be toned down, etc. With that said, it ought to be pretty dang gorgeous.

It’ll still be a while before we see any games powered by the engine. Epic currently has no plans to get into the iPhone space for themselves, though they plan to license the engine some time in the near future. Epic has been been far more aggressive in pricing their engine licensing lately than they have in years prior, going as far as to give it away for free for noncommercial/educational use. Will they keep things cheap for the iPhone variant? We sure hope so.

Lastly: They’re not giving any specifics, but Epic’s also planning on showing off the engine running on a different mobile platform at CES. All things considered, it’s probably not webOS or BlackBerry OS – and that only leaves so many options. Any guesses?

[Via Engadget]

PayPal is finally extending its money transfer system to the BlackBerry, with a new, free Send Money app for the Blackberry. The app will let you access your PayPal account and easily send money to a recipient. You can find on the BlackBerry App World here.

The app will also tap into your contact list on the phone making it simple to choose a recipient to send money too. Users can also access their recent PayPal transactions and monitor their account balances directly from the app.

You can even send money in 23 different currencies, with the app available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Portugal and Australia. The BlackBerry PayPal app joins its iPhone and Android app cousins.

While the new BlackBerry app is minor compared to some of the recent innovations PayPal has launched, it still represents the company’s greater strategy of becoming the next wave of payments technology. PayPal’s parent company eBay, has made a big push in the mobile space so its safe to assume that PayPal will continue to focus on mobile opportunities in the coming year.

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CrunchBase Information

PayPal

Website:	paypal.com
Location:	San Jose, California, United States
Founded:	December 1, 1998
Acquired:	July 8, 2002 by eBay for $1.5B in Stock

PayPal is an online payments and money transfer service that allows you to send money via email, phone, text message or Skype. They offer products to both individuals and businesses alike, including online vendors, auction sites and corporate users…. Learn More

eBay

Website:	ebay.com
Location:	San Jose, California, United States
Founded:	September 1, 1995
IPO:	September 21, 1998

eBay is an online auction site where people buy and sell goods worldwide. Any item can be sold online as long as it is not illegal or it does not violate eBay’s Prohibited and Restricted Items policy.

eBay items can be sold either via a silent… Learn More