In some gamers’ minds, Epic Games has snubbed the platform that put them on the map. Gears of War 2 and 3 have both skipped the PC on their way to retail. Previous comments by Gears lead designer Cliff Bleszinski and Epic President Mike Capps have stated the move was due to rampant piracy on the platform. Epic Vice President Mark Rein spoke with Rock, Paper, Shotgun to set the record straight.
“We’ve released an update to the Unreal Development Kit every single month, with huge amounts of changes and improvements which are obviously going into our engine and making them available to customers, we’ve tested them on PC,” Rein said when asked about Epic’s dismissal of the PC. “If you look at all the UDK games they’re PC only at this point, and we will eventually see them on other devices. But I think that’s a myth that we’ve abandoned the PC, it’s just not true. I mean, Bulletstorm is coming out on three platforms.”
Rein says that Gears of War being published by Microsoft has informed that title’s status as console-only. “We’ve just been in this situation where our biggest franchise has been published by a console-holder, and was a very console designed-IP. I wouldn’t want people to mistake that for our intentions or our interests, because we’re very much into the PC game business.”
“Don’t confuse Gears of War with everything we do. There’s a tendency to think that because we wanna do one thing really, really well and not a hundred things really poorly or just okay that we’re less committed,” he added. “Bulletstorm is PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 and you’ll see when it comes out, it will be a full-blown, oh-my-god amazing PC game. I wouldn’t draw the comparisons there.”
