Editor’s note: Ryan Smith is a longtime gamer and freelance writer who lives in Raleigh, NC. A graduate of East Carolina University with a degree in business and marketing, he has written in the past for WRAL Tech Wire and GameArgus.com. He currently plays Xbox 360 and PC as well as Nintendo DS. For story ideas, tips and feedback, he can be reached via e-mail (ryannicksmith@gmail.com)

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Last Tuesday was a very important day for Epic Games, to say the very least.

The final installment in their flagship game series Gears of War series dropped on Sep. 20 to tremendous success with 3 million-plus copies in sales. But in the wake of its release even more has happened for the highly successful Cary studio.

Epic Games President Dr. Mike Capps and Creative Director Donald Mustard of Epic subsidiary Chair Entertainment revealed Infinity Blade 2 on Tuesday on the stage of Apple’s Special Event in Cupertino, Calif. as Apple rolled out its new iPhone 4S.

Apple even featured the game as part of the phone’s debut.

At the same time, to help build the storyline and world of their new intellectual property, Brandon Sanderson (author of famous fantasy novels such as Mistborn, the final trilogy of The Wheel of Time) helped Epic release Infinity Blade: Awakening. Penned by Sanderson, Awakening is a novella available for the Apple iBookstore, Amazon.com, Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nookss, that helps bring Infinity Blade’s backstory to light.

Also, “it was confirmed that Infinity Blade has gross revenues of $20 million” Epic Senior Public Relations Manager Dan Cowley announced.

Epic “has earned $13.4 million (after Apple’s cut),” she added.

But even still, the good news wasn’t over for Epic. A mere 30 minutes after Epic revealed Infinity Blade 2, Epic’s Technical Director Tim Sweeny announced Unreal Engine 3 running in the newly unveiled Flash 11 at Adobe MAX 2011 in Los Angeles.

Incorporating Flash just makes the industry’s popular cross-platform engine even more powerful and will bring more advanced gaming to hand-held devices.

As a gamer, I love Gears of War. Unreal Tournament in its day was a staple in our LAN (local area network) parties. Infinity Blade is basically the best “hardcore” iOS game to date.

With Unreal Engine 3 soon to be supercharging web-browser based gaming, I can truly say Epic is a blessing upon the gaming world. They know what many gamers (if not most or all) want, and their Unreal Engine 3 has already produced some of the greatest games of this generation. Not only Gears of War, mind you, but titles like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect and countless more.

Cowley described the past several days quite appropriately: “Big week!”

Game on Epic. Game on.

Get the latest news alerts: Follow WRAL Tech Wire at Twitter.