With five million copies of the original sold, and high expectations for the sequel, has Gears of War become the most important franchise for Epic, even over Unreal Tournament?
I think it's safe to say that, yes. I think Unreal Tournament has been our bread and butter for years, it's been very successful, but it's hard to argue with the success of Gears. Unreal Tournament 3, we very much care about it, it's a well reviewed game. At the same time, if you look at where Gears is right now on the 360, I think it's safe to say that it's our primary franchise.
So do you think that UT could make another comeback?
It remains to be seen what we're going to be doing with Unreal Tournament in the future. We'd need to announce that.
Do you see the Xbox 360 as the main platform as opposed to the PC? During the whole Unreal time it was very much PC focused.
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.
So piracy was a main point for you...
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.
Definitely not?
No.