The next generation of hardware will have to seriously up its game if it expects to keep up with Epic’s hugely popular Unreal Engine.

Speaking at DICE Summit 2012, Epic boss Tim Sweeney said the Samaritan Unreal tech demo unveiled at GDC 2011 required 2.5 terraFLOPS to run.

Develop reports that’s ten times the power of an Xbox 360, at .25 terraFLOPS.

The Samaritan demo was demonstrated on Unreal Engine 3; the next iteration of the tech may have very different requirements. Epic described the demo as a target for hardware manufacturers to aim for with next-generation platforms.

Unreal Engine 4 is due for reveal this year, with a release expected in 2014.