Jahr: 2005

Could we, in the future, adapt Gears for Windows just as Microsoft did with Halo? Sure we could and, as you can see from J Allard’s comments, Microsoft is clearly cool with that idea. But we’re a long way off from thinking about that. Right now our only goal is to make Gears one of the „must have“ titles for Xbox360 and judging by reaction to our relatively early showing at E3 we’re well on our way toward achieving that. One major web site, 1UP.com, already voted us their Best Xbox360 Game in their Best of E3 roundup!

J Allard: It’s Xbox and PC.

Eurogamer: It’s interesting. Why have you not made those Xbox/PC titles like Call Of Duty 2, Quake 4 exclusive to Xbox 360?

J Allard: I always get back to the gamers. Every decision we make is really focused on what the gamers want. A ton of our gamers are dual gamers meaning that they have PC and console because they prefer some aspects of PC, especially in FPSs. Okay, should we really make Quake an exclusive that you can’t play on PC.

Eurogamer: You did exactly that with Halo, though, and that’s the point. You yanked it off PC and made it an Xbox exclusive.

J Allard: No, no. We published Halo on both PC and Mac.

Eurogamer: Yes, but that was about two years later!

J Allard: We didn’t talk about sequencing. Gears Of War will be on both platforms, but it might be on one before the other. That’s a little bit more of a game time decision.

All of which is to say, as Douglas Adams once said: Don’t panic. Quake 4 looked a lot better to me in person at Raven’s office than it did at this brief demo, where it was just impossible to see the kind of thought and detail going into the game. You may remain skeptical now if you like, but I’m still on board.