[GDC] Gears of War PC, No GoW 2, No Unreal En...

[GDC] Gears of War PC, No GoW 2, No Unreal Engine 3 On Wii

Epic Games went home with more than just three GDC Awards for their Gears of War Xbox 360 shooter, after last week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Several rumours have also stuck on to them, but luckly they're already trying to clear them up. One issue that's actually been bothering them - and us most of all - for a very long time now is the supposed PC version of Gears of War. Of course, everyone expects it to come out sooner or later. But the problem is neither Epic Games nor Microsoft have announced any firm release date. And judging by Mark Rein's comments from GDC 2007 (via The Inquirer), the PC conversion is not the studio's priority right now.

Epic's vice-president reportedly said that Gears of War would come to the PC soon eventually, but pointed out that their studio isn't large enough to handle a multitude of projects. So in other words, Unreal Tournament III comes first, and once that's done, we can start hoping again.

Even less certain is the existence of a Gears of War 2 sequel - another obvious (though still unconfirmed) future project for Epic. A couple of days ago, various websites (including Gamespot) said that the sequel was quietly announced at GDC last week, by Epic lead designer Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski. But Mark Rein was quick to respond on the Epic Games forums, claiming that "The Gamespot article is wrong. Cliff didn't confirm anything of the sort.". So until further announcements, this is as official as it gets.

On a related note, GameDaily BIZ has a detailed report about CliffyB's GDC session, as he talked about designing Gears of War and how the game came to be, from their initial idea of a FPS focused on large scale battles and territory control, titled Unreal Warfare.

And finally, during another, more private talk at GDC 2007, Mark Rein also talked about the studio's Unreal Engine 3 technology and the (im)possibility of it being used in Wii games. They don't intend to do anything for Nintendo's console with Unreal Engine 3, or to support it, but Rein is sure that "one of our licensees will at some point squeeze it down into the Wii, the way Ubisoft squeezed Unreal Engine II into the PSP". That sounds like a very distant prospect...

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)