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And In Stark Contrast To The Below:

Written by Alec Meer on October 1, 2008.

Here’s Cliffy B being a nincompoop about Gears of War 2, the PC and piracy:

The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here’s the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

But when the dust has settled, is there any possibility of Gears 2 on PC?

No.

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Street Fighter Epicamentness

Written by John Walker on June 2, 2008.

As the ravages of jetlag cruelly drag me down, I crawl broken and red-eyed from bed to bring you more news of Street Fighter on PC. Was this really worth getting up for? It’s hard to know any more. But it is apparently an EPIC RETURN. That’s good to know. Video below!

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Clifford Bleszinski Grows Up A Bit

Written by Alec Meer on May 21, 2008.

No comment.

Gears Of War 2 Footage

Written by Jim Rossignol on May 10, 2008.

God knows when Epic’s hyper-muscular shooter sequel will chainsaw its way through a flimsy format-exclusive to find itself on PC, but here’s the first footage anyway. It’s introduced by the Internet’s favourite Clifford Bleszinski, Clifford Bleszinski, who is the lead designer on the game. By golly it looks a bit exciting: guns, giant machines, flying octopuses ridden by evil aliens. ClickJump for War.

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The Unreally Real Deal

Written by Jim Rossignol on April 9, 2008.

VG247 have talked to Mark Rein about the Unreal Engine deal with EA. The deal apparently includes use of the latest Unreal tech in more than five different titles. Rein also says some other stuff about Epic’s current position:

““I think what excites me most about the engine licensing business today isn’t just that we’re doing a large number of licenses with companies like EA, but also that we’re finding the smaller companies. Like APB, the MMO game from Real Time Worlds: it looks nothing like any other Unreal Engine 3 game. And we’re seeing companies like Chair Entertainment with games like Undertow. So, what’s exciting to me is that the technology is being used by so many people to do so many different things.”

In other Epic news: Intel are sponsoring the Make Something Unreal competition to the tune of One Million Dollars. Better get modding…

The Thursday Papers

Written by Alec Meer on April 3, 2008.

Hell, any day can be round-up day. Rather than Kieron’s regular Sunday collection of notable word-sciences though, instead this is a one-off, rather more hotchpotch grab-bag of happy happenstances that have caught my eye today, as I fight the urge to pretend this has any relevancy whatsoever to Space Week.

First up, we’ve got the announcement of Tom Clancy’s HAWX, which totally sounds like a group of male strippers, but is actually an aerial combat thingum set in the GRAW universe. Which, for all the oppressively heavy branding, is actually kinda appealing – we don’t get too many dogfighters these days, so it’s nice to see a new big-money attempt at making one for a broad audience.
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An Epic Tale

Written by Alec Meer on March 18, 2008.

In case you hadn’t noticed yet, Epic’s Unreal back catalogue – so no Gears of War or Jazz Jackrabbit, unfortunately – has cropped up on Steam. This comes just a couple of days after guys-who-enjoy-opening-squillions-of-data-files-in-notepad spotted what they reckoned were references to Epic games in Steam’s guts, causing web rumour mills to spin themselves into a frenzy.

The sheer breadth of the Steam store is becoming faintly (but agreeably) obscene. If EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft ever end up pledging allegiance to it, I foresee the death of Windows. We boot straight into Steam, we play all our games in Steam, we chat with our friends in Steam and we hack its browser to write and read RPS in Steam. Then the entire planet splits into two opposing camps – the Valvemen and the Googlemen – and we fight to the death for which giant monolithic corporation we want to entrust all our personal data to. Maybe.
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Unreal Engine 4 to “exclusively target console”

Written by Alec Meer on March 13, 2008.

It’s been coming for a while, if we’re honest. Epic have recently been taking it in turns to say disparaging things about the state of PC gaming, to the point that CliffyB’s now considered something of a Benedict Arnold figure in some of the more rabid PC camps.

And now they’re burning another bridge, further confirming that PC is no longer their most beloved (edit – for those misinterpreting, Epic are not abandoning the PC, just confirming they’re developing their next-gen engine for consoles first and foremost). It’s hardly a shock, but allow us a teary moment anyway.
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Mark Rein: “Cliff’s an idiot!”

Written by Kieron Gillen on February 26, 2008.

He’s joking, obviously. Cliffy B’s lovely. Eurogamer mentioned this quote yesterday, but have put up the full interview today. In it, after the terrier of Eurogamer Tom Bramwell stops trying to make him talk about Gears of War 2 for a whole page, he starts talking PC…

“Hey, Cliff is Cliff, and he’s making a console game, and that’s what he’s focused on, so that’s what his thinking is all about. But as a company, we make PC games. We love the PC, it’s our heritage, we want to see it be strong, and we want to sell games like Unreal Tournament III and Gears of War on PC, and have them sell as well as they do on console.”

He goes on to talk about the PC Gaming alliance and his actually positive feelings on the sales of UT3. Jump in here to skip the Gears of War 2 harrying.

Epic Focus On Money 360

Written by Jim Rossignol on February 14, 2008.

In a recent interview Cliffy ‘Gears Of War’ Bleszinski, he say:

I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and “Gears” is at 4.5 million right now on the 360. I think the PC is just in disarray… what’s driving the PC right now is ‘Sims’-type games and ‘WoW’ and a lot of stuff that’s in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That’s the direction PC is evolving into. So for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we’re doing. It’s important for us, but right now making AAA games on consoles is where we’re at.

It’s true, we’d all rather be insanely wealthy than mildly wealthy. And talk about a role-reversal, eh? The PC becoming the casual gaming platform where Peggle and friendly MMOs dominate? Weird ass. He’s right though, what terrible times for PC gaming. Disarray, you might call it. The full story is over on MTV’s blog thing.

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