No Gears 2 for PC: Mark Rein Cites 360 Focus Not Piracy Concern as Reason

by Chad Lakkis on October 1, 2008 at 6:40 pm

By now you have likely heard that the highly anticipated Gears of War 2 will not be making its way to your PC. Assuming that you wanted to play it there in the first place, the news may have come as a disappointment to you.

Personally, I don’t play very many games on my PC, with the exception of an obscure MMO called World of Warcraft that you may or may not have heard of. Regardless, according to the PC Gaming Alliance, which I had the opportunity to speak to at the past GDC, the PC gaming population is alive and growing. Epic Games VP, Mark Rein, is a member of this alliance which also includes representatives from NVIDIA, Dell, Intel, Gateway, and others.

That said, I decided to reach out to Mark and ask him personally about his company’s decision to not release Gears 2 on the PC. Specifically, I reiterated the statements made in a recent interview, by his lead designer (CliffyB if you live under a rock), where he had cited piracy concerns as the reason for the focus on the 360.

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 BitTorrent 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.

I asked Mark to respond to the statements made by his designer, stating “Your lead designer has been quoted saying that piracy is the main concern”, to which he responded:

The reason we decided not to develop Gears 2 for PC was so that we could focus our resources on making Gears 2 the best possible Xbox 360 game it could be rather than splitting them across multiple platforms like we did with the first one. I think Gears 2 will be a better game for it and that this was the right decision.

Mark’s response makes no mention of piracy as a deterrent in the game’s creation for the PC, and by not doing so it almost directly contradicts it as the motive. Taking Mark at his word, it is still hard pill to swallow for PC gamers.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with Cliff’s savvy consumer analogy, you can hardly disagree that piracy adversely effects the bottom line of digitally distributed media creators. Some may argue both points as rubbish, and it would be their right to do so, but I can understand the logic behind both.

Finally, I asked Mark about the piracy concern in general on PC’s and if he and the PCGA had any plans to deal with the concern in the future, to which he responded:

“This issue is something we’re looking at as a group …”

He then added that I would be better served contacting the group’s Intel representative for further insight into their plans, which I fully intend to do. There was a time not long ago when piracy was a major concern for consoles, but due to technology advances, that has become less of a mainstream problem. Here’s to hoping a solution is arrived upon for the PC sooner rather than later.

Tags: cliffyb, Gears 2, Gears-of-War-2, Mark-Rein, PC Alliance, PCGA

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Power of Red

"The reason we decided not to develop Gears 2 for PC was so that we could focus our resources on making Gears 2 the best possible Xbox 360 game it could be rather than splitting them across multiple platforms like we did with the first one"

Bullocks, they focused on the first gears and AFTER a year they made the port to PC, they will do the same again.

Marcin

So, basically, this opens up the possibilty that it will be ported later on by another studio or a Microsoft team? All those 360 fanboys are getting set up for some major ownage.

Xbot

They said the same thing about gears 1, LMAO i feel sorry for people beta testing gears 2 on xbox 360, the superior PC version will drop sooner or later.

alain from miami

WE WANT GEAR OF WAR 2 FOR PC WHAT IS XBOX 360

IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER PLEASE SAY IT TO CLIFFY B AND FOR MARK REIN,WE PLAY GEARS 1 AND SO

GEASRS 2..............THKX

Anon

Who cares about GoW2?. GoW was a POS, and UT3 boring as hell. Epic lost its way long ago, and now all the news I see about them are Cliffy or Mark crying about piracy and how they should have sold a gazillion units.

Sorry, men, you can't insult your bread and butter and expect them to buy your bugridden games later.

madpuppy

"cliffy", let me introduce you to an innovative little item called a "hair Brush" it was invented to keep people from looking like slobs.

Ticked off

F*ck you Cliff and f*ck you Epic. What a bunch of sellouts. I was a big Unreal/UT fan. Was a UT2k4 fan. I think Gears/UT3 are good games, but not a huge fan. Point is, I think they have trouble keeping up with the curve... and with the drop of PC development they just spat on a bunch of their fan base. So here's a big finger chumps; and no, you can't stick it up your A**, there's a 360 controller up there taking all the space.

Retarded Penguin

Why dont you tell us how you really feel? LOL

Retarded Penguin

The good thing about Mark's response (if you are a PC owner) is that it leaves the door open for a port in the future.

It's not over til' its over. No reason to give up hope for a PC Gears sequel just yet.

The Saint

For every 100 PC owners, maybe there's two or three who has a rig capable of running Gears of War at its best. Those are the ones whining and complaining thinking they're better than everyone else. Frankly, I think anyone who's willing to spend $5,000 on a PC in order to match the capabilities of a $300 console is an idiot. Epic did the right thing.

madpuppy

You're kidding right? 5k on a PC that can play gears? that is just stupid. If you are dumb enough to buy a Dell xps or Alienware computer you deserve to spend 5k.
on average you can spend about 800.00 and get a PC that will play most anything out there, including Crysis. and it is not a toy,(read: it can do thousands of things more than a console will ever do.) as for consoles, I own all 3 and I like them alot, doesn't mean that I am going to give up PC gaming.

PC Hardware

The Saint - What? You have to be kidding right? $5,000 for a PC? We're talking about a time when you can get 4 gigs of DDR2 RAM for $50 and a Radeon HD 4850 for $170. Throw that into a bare bones PC and you have something that can handle Gears of War PC and your mom for not that much more than a console... plus you can do everything else you can do with a computer on the rig that a 360 cannot. Your argument is about 5 years old. Learn something on the products you spout off about. Silly sods.

Puddle_of_AIDS

Wow saint.....really? spending 5k on a computer is the equivalent of getting aids from a mexican donkey, its just plain stupid. I spent about $900 on my compter and it gets a better frame rate then the xbox 360 will ever get on a game. Dont get me wrong, i own a 360 and i love the thing, but please get your facts straight before you make an ass of yourself =]

The Saint

LOL. Not only are PC gamers stupid, they are liars, too.

madpuppy

I see, just because you are too stupid or lazy to get your information right PC gamers are liars.

There is another option though, you are just a basic, every day stupid, lazy TROLL.

PaNiC

@Saint

If you are so smart using your pc and making a reply here I suggest to browse for some hardware parts and be amazed how cheap everything has really become.
And pc is more versitale then any console on the market, bang for bucks tbh.

MikeA

LOL look at all the PC gamers crying. LAWL

Puddle_of_AIDS

bitch I aint no liar. Dont be a dick just because you know your wrong. Only an idiot like you would spend 5k on a computer. while people like me (who actually know a thing or two) spend 1k......bitch ass hoe.

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