Education 4.0 is a new educational paradigm that intends to address the needs and potentialities of the fourth industrial revolution. Education 4.0 builds on the concept of learning by doing, in which students are encouraged to learn and discover different things in singular ways based on experimentation. This study intends to analyze the role of emerging technologies like serious games and industry 4.0 in the transformation of education 4.0 in higher education. A qualitative methodology was employed based on 25 case studies of innovative projects in Portuguese higher education institutions. The results indicate a residual adoption of serious games and gamification approaches only appear in less than 20% of the projects. It was also possible to identify that most projects involve several stakeholders such as teachers, students and university managers, and typically involve multidisciplinary competencies fields. The main benefits brought to the education context include greater involvement of students in projects, development of their skills and its application in a real context. On the other hand, the main challenges are the simplification of the real world made by these applications, the difficulties inherent to their inclusion in the didactical system and the limited capacities to offer greater interactivity without predefined external stimuli.