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PC Games (Games) XBox (Games)

Gears of War Heading To PC Someday 69

Posted by Zonk from the taking-cover-behind-your-video-card dept.
Mark Rein, of Epic Studios, told the folks over at Team Xbox that sooner or later Gears of War will be heading for the PC. With Microsoft's 'ownership' of both the 360 and PC platforms, it's a no-brainer that Epic's epic will make its way there eventually; the question is one of keeping quality high and satisfying fans of the franchise. They also discuss the hopeful-looking future for the game, as a part of the Marketplace download ecology and in future games. Rein states: "The big challenge is to make a game that was designed solely for the console, to take advantage of every last little corner of that console, to fill every little crack and run as many threads as we could and do as much to exploit the power of that machine, and make it run well on enough PCs to be worth releasing. That's a challenge." For another look back and forward on the game, 1up has a chat with CliffyB up on their site.
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Gears of War Heading To PC Someday More

Gears of War Heading To PC Someday

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  • With the money they are making on it anyway why not?!
  • Rein doesn't sound very enthusiastic in TFA:

    People ask me, "Are you going to do it on PC?" Yeah, eventually...I don't think that's any great secret that we would like to do it on PC, but for now it's a 360 game. Eventually we'll get around to a PC version. I just don't know when.
    Translation: When we feel like whoring out our franchise for a bunch of cash, we'll give you a PC version.
    Ah well, I'm still excited that I'll be able to get my hands on it eventually.
    • "When we feel like whoring out our franchise for a bunch of cash, we'll give you a PC version."

      "Whoring out our franchise" implies they were doing something for some noble higher purchase and are now succumbing to the call of cash, and giving up their moral stance. It implies that there's something seedy about writing games for the PC. I don't think it applies here.

      "Gears of War" was written to make money. Expanding to the PC market allows them to make MORE money. No change in position, goals, or mor
      • I think that it's a funny contrast with the rest of the article:

        And just bring people the awesome, compelling experience, and hike up the quality of the gameplay, but not lose what's great about UT. In fact, I think we've brought back some of the things that people liked about the original UT--and toned down one or two of the things that people maybe didn't like about the last game in the series, and, again, just get it right.

        So, there's all kinds of cool games being done with the technology, and I guess that's kind of our job over the next few years, is to just broaden people's imaginations and stop thinking about shooters.

        We just need to help people broaden their imaginations.

        Despite all of this talk about how they're dedicated to innovation, his only comment about the PC version of Gears of War is that they want to "make it run well on enough PCs to be worth releasing."
        Notice in my post that I'm not angry about this (quite the contrary - I'm psyched for GOW on the PC) but I do think that it's quite funny - even Rein admits that GOW on the PC will at best be only as good as GOW on the 360, which by that point w

  • PC...the land of the ports. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PingSpike ( 947548 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @02:54PM (#18027212)
    One can only hope they do as bang up of a job as they did with those Halo games...or Thief deadly shadows or even Oblivion. Oh sure, those last couple were actually billed as PC games but they both had the stink of console on them. I mean...you guys did get a load of the gigantic icons and text in Oblivion right? And the limited shortcut keys? What would it have taken? 3 Days to shrink the icons and fonts while expanding some of the hotkeys for the PC? And they couldn't even be bothered to do that. Hell, in most ways Morrowind had a better interface then Oblivion.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by flatcat ( 464267 )
      Probably be just another Direct X 10, Windows Vista only project like Halo 2.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by DarkJC ( 810888 )
      Gears of War is UE3 based, so I would imagine that since Epic has UE3 running on the PC already (UT2k7) a Gears port would be trivial and capable of better-than-360 performance.
      • Sweet! Now I won't ever need to purchase a 360 just to play a game i've been dying to try out :D

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tim C ( 15259 )
        Epic has UE3 running on the PC already (UT2k7)

        UT2k7 has been renamed UT3; apparently 2k3 and 2k4 are being counted as a single title. That's almost fair enough, given that from what I remember, 2k4 is essentially equivalent to a service pack to 2k3 (although it's been a long time since I played 2k3), albeit a rather expensive one...
        • 2k4 is essentially equivalent to a service pack to 2k3 (although it's been a long time since I played 2k3), albeit a rather expensive one...

          Not if you skipped 2k3.
    • Oblivion just seemed lazy with the large icons, sure thanks to the mod community the issue was fixed but I think as customers you tend to expect companies to put in that little bit extra of effort to make things nice. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gregtron ( 1009171 )
      Yeah... But then you'd be playing Morrowind.

      There's something about gaming on a console that I prefer over PC gaming. Not only do I sit, chained, to a computer all day at work, when I get home I fire a computer up to read the news, get new music, and to keep in touch with friends and family. Unless I need a WoW fix, I'd rather throw an FPS or goofy Wii game on the tube, especially if there will be friends and/or booze involved.

    • One can only hope they do as bang up of a job as they did with those Halo games...

      WHAT? The Halo PC port SUCKED. Absolutely no optimization. Multiplayer interface is the worst I've ever seen. Ever tried to figure out which weapons are used in a match? Or the Vehicles? You have to wait at least 20 seconds per server watching the scrollbar on the bottom that tells you the info about the server set up. That's not even considering the technical optimization. There's no options for AA. AF has to be forced through the graphics drivers and it looks ugly. Not to mention how the game plays in ge

      • You completely missed the sarcasm. Read the rest of the post.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Threni ( 635302 )
        > You have to wait at least 20 seconds per server watching the scrollbar on the bottom that tells you
        > the info about the server set up.

        You think that's bad - you should check out any game in the Battlefield series...
      • Halo PC sucked becase Gearbox made a half-assed port. Halo PC had the potential to be great, but Gearbox made a mess of the port, with shitty internet play, unoptimized graphics, and having to use a seperate EXE in order to allow third party maps. The gameplay itself was really fun, but it was obviously gimped by Gearbox's incompitance.

        Bungie themselves are working on Halo 2 PC. Frankly, I can't wait, because if anyone has what it takes to deliver Halo 2 to the PC in a worthwhile package, it's Bungie.

    • I'm surprised all the Oblivion fans on slashdot didn't mod you to hell. I for one agree with you, the hotkey setup in Oblivion was a joke, the UI was a joke, it was designed for the visually impaired I think. I'm still waiting for a decent Oblivion mod to make the PC version less console-sucky.
      • I'm still waiting for a decent Oblivion mod to make the PC version less console-sucky.

        What, BTMod, Elven Map, Book Jackets and Natural Environments wasn't good enough for you?
        • All those mods you listed are superficial changes, what I want is some real gameplay changes!

          1) BTMOD - Modify/customize the User Interface (visual changes)
          2) Elven Map - a prettier map (visual mod)
          3) Book Jackets - nice pretty books (a visual mod)
          4) Natural Environments - again, a visual mod

          When I say real gameplay changes, I mean like a better combat system (melee & magic). It's way too simple and get's boring extremely fast. For example, if you play a straight warrior, all you have is just a couple d
          • When I say real gameplay changes, I mean like a better combat system (melee & magic). It's way too simple and get's boring extremely fast.

            Ahh, I see. Yes, then I agree with you. BTMod removed the worst of the console-itis from the user interface, but I agree the game is too easy. There are a few special attacks available actually once you get to expert level in some skills. You can jump attack, move siteways and tap attack, or hold down attack and move forward or back to do a few special attacks like a

    • One can only hope they do as bang up of a job as they did with those Halo games...or Thief deadly shadows or even Oblivion.

      I wasn't aware that Epic made any of those games. Naive me, I thought that was Bungee, Looking Glass Studios, and Bethesda Sofworks respectively.

      Although I know that "Thief: Deadly Shadows" was built on the Unreal Engine. [unrealtechnology.com] But it wasn't made by Epic.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Mex ( 191941 )
      3 days? Please. Some fans did a mod with the xml engine to reduce the text and window size, and it probably took them less than half a day.

  • Oh .. the Irony (Score:3, Funny)

    by Brigade ( 974884 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:12PM (#18027564)
    GoW drove sales of the Xbox 360 through the holidays. Damn shame that it probably won't do the same for Vista .. [slashdot.org]

  • 360 Controller for PC (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sciros ( 986030 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:12PM (#18027568) Journal
    Why don't they just mandate that you get that spiffy 360 Controller for PC? It's not *that* expensive and IMO is a decent investment anyway considering how good of a controller it is. And naturally it would mean that they don't have to mess with the game's pacing which would be a good thing because I think the pacing was well-done in Gears.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Brigade ( 974884 )
      Well .. you're looking at $50 for the game, $50 for a Wireless 360 controller, and another $20 for the PC Wireless adapter. That's a pretty steep cost of entry.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trdrstv ( 986999 )
        Well .. you're looking at $50 for the game, $50 for a Wireless 360 controller, and another $20 for the PC Wireless adapter. That's a pretty steep cost of entry.

        It's $40 for the 360's Wired (USB) controller.

    • uh this is a FPS isn't it? Who the hell wants to play a FPS with a controller when you have a mouse sitting right there in front of you?

    • Re:360 Controller for PC (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vecctor ( 935163 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:20PM (#18027714)
      I think, for a lot of people, the whole point of playing FPS/TPS games on the PC is NOT having to use the controller and being able to use keyboard/mouse.
    • Why both make it for the PC at all then? I've seriously been wondering if Microsoft has been trying to figure out whether they could get away with requiring 'Games for Windows' games to use a xbox360 controller. I mean, the whole thing kind of sounds like they're trying to turn a gaming PC into an overpriced xbox360.

      The question is...why bother spending the extra money on a PC Gaming machine at all if all there is to play is console ports that aren't even updated to take advantage of the different platform.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
        The "Games for Windows" I've seen so far were the AoE3 expansion and Company of Heroes, both RTS and neither suited for a console controller. I'm not using my 360 controller much either because most gamepad-capable games on my PC are 2d and the 360 pad sucks for those games. I'm using a cheap-ass PS2 imitation controller and it works much better for 2d games because it has a reasonable deadzone on the left analog stick (the digital pad sucks on both controllers). I even play fighting games on the thing and

  • I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mex ( 191941 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:18PM (#18027686)
    It will be a "Windows Vista" exclusive, right?

    • It will be a "Windows Vista" exclusive, right?
      Sure... if they want to severely limit [random high-90s]% of their marketshare.
       

  • Do console ports work? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by T0wner ( 552792 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:21PM (#18027738)
    Forgive me for being sceptical here, but in the last 5 years (or ever come to think of it), can you name an FPS game which moved sucessfully from a console to a PC? Crys of "omfg Halo is the pwnzors" will not suffice since it was hardly as sucessful as say the Quake/Doom or Half-Life series or most original PC made FPS games.

    IMO they simply dont translate well because fundamentally the controls are simplified on a console. Moving from an inaccurate control system to a more accurate keyboard and mouse means the gameplay is changed and I am yet to see it translated well enough to satisfy the so called PC "twitch gamers". This is of course assuming that you dont want to use a gamepad (in which case why dont you have a console in the first place?)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Brigade ( 974884 )
      Not to criticize your point, maybe off-topic, but Gears is a "3rd Person Shooter" not a FPS (First-Person Shooter).

      Controller would probably work a lot better than Keyboard/Mouse in this instance, the only time you're in a FPS perspective is when you zoom in. They REALLY did a hellova job mapping the controller to the game (and the triggers make the game playable).

      I'd like to qualify my opinion by stating that I've played FPS since Doom (Yes 1), and I absolutely refused to play ANY FPS on ANY console

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by vecctor ( 935163 )
        Personally, I think TPS is just as good with keyboard/mouse as FPS.

        I would put forth Max Payne (1&2), Splinter Cell (not sure how many there are now, I played a couple), Jedi Outcast, and Jedi Academy as examples of this. I played all those in third-person mode (though some had first-person options) and the mouse was definetly still my weapon of choice.

    • GTA (Score:2)

      by British ( 51765 )
      While I have all the GTA games on my PS2 and enjoy them, I would be tempted to buy GTA:SA for Windows, that is if my system wasn't 4+ years old. Why? Mods. There's the multi theft auto mod, and other mods(different cars, etc) I'd love to get my hands on. I can't do that with the PS2, but easily on the PC.

      And with a mouse, I'd do better on those shooting gallery missions, but otherwise play with my Thrustmaster, which is a PS2 controller + 2 extra buttons & no pressure sensitivity on the quad-buttons.
      • FYI, GTA:SA works just fine on my 4 year old PC. Of course, it depends on what 4+ actually stands for, but the game isn't very demanding. I've upgraded a little since then, but at that time I had a P4 2.6, 512MB of RAM, and 9600Pro.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kelbear ( 870538 )
      GoW would not translate well to kb/m. Considering the map layout and movement speeds involved in this game, being able to use mouse precision would drastically change the gameplay. It'd be like playing counter-strike with everybody's walk button taped down.

      Right now melee combat is a very significant equalizer in this game since disparity in armament becomes irrelevant once you get up close, which happens fairly regularly since controllers just aren't as precise as mice. If kb/m is used, ranged weapons vast
    • Maybe not, but it worked the other way around. Half Life for the PS2 was awful, but Half life 2 for the xbox was spectacular. The controller did not limit you as much as you'd think, and even made the driving parts easier.
  • If you have just a little patience, then almost all the games out on the XBox 360 will be put into PC platform. Like Halo did for the regular Xbox and a few other games that dont need to be mentioned becasue they suck. Not to mention elumators work great on the PC to play a huge portion of Xbox games. Now dont get me wrong here. I am an avid Microsoft fan, beta tester and what not for them. but I would never put money down on a fancy gaming system when i could drop the same money into my home system and h
    • Well, you sir, are most definately uninformed. Have you taken a look at the state of xbox emulation on Windows (I cant comment on Mac or Linux, but Windows will be first to get it for numerous reasons including the fact Xbox uses a modifyed DX)? There are 2 games that will run on the 2 emulators playably, Turok on CXBX or whatever it is (cant remember it), which got abandoned and is close sourced, and Halo another Emulator I can't remember. These games are both ported, and to boot, run like crap in the emul

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Wingfat ( 911988 )
        hmm I should do research? I think not. You should resarch before bagging on someone else's post. I maybe should not have said elumator. But have you heard of the: "XBOX software development kit" you can download that almost anywhere. I know, I know it really isn't an elumator in that since, but in the other way it is because you can play all the xBox game images. So very easy to DL and play on your home PC it isnt funny. I agree with you on that you are right about those other two elumators.. they suck a
        • That may be so, but as you yourself agreed, you said Emulator, and combine that with the fact that using a emulator is legitimate, whereas using the Xbox dev kit is not, and also the number of home users that could even USE a emulator, let alone the damn Dev kit, your arguement is useless :D - Not ment as a flame either, just a reply which seems slightly agressive.
  • That'll be two systems I can ignore this pile of crap on. Colour palette of brown and grey; weapons that take an entire magazine to kill anything; gameplay that consists of running from cover to cover, sticking your gun muzzle out of cover and spraying bullets in the hope of hitting something at random. Did nobody else notice these tiny defects or was it just me?

  • Co-Operative Mode (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tcolberg ( 998885 )
    The big thing for me, if there is a port, is that they bring over co-operative play via LAN or the net. Halo's port was a huge disappointment to me because they dropped co-op play. For me, especially with games such as these that have weak stories, co-op is a deal breaker.

  • Gears of War runs on UE3 which runs on the pc (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheThiefMaster ( 992038 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @06:10PM (#18030806)
    The company I work at licences the Unreal 3 engine for their upcoming games. Our game merely needs recompiling to switch targets between pc, xbox360 and ps3 (though we don't have any ps3s at our studio. Ironically we have a wii despite not developing for it). I'd bet that Gears of War is the same, that they merely need to change the project config and press build to get a pc version.
    • I ask not because I'm a Linux zealot (though I am), but because UT2004 supported all of those, working straight from a Linux installer on the CDs.

      I mean, it's obvious Linux hasn't been the native dev environment for any recent Epic or Id games -- all the editing tools are given away for Windows only -- but I can still hope to at least be able to play the game by upgrading my Ubuntu for free, instead of paying to upgrade to Vista.
      • I've only seen it running on (windows xp) pc and xbox 360, but it definitely supports both direct-x and opengl. I honestly don't know if it runs on linux or not. I haven't seen a native AMD64 build either, unfortunately.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DeeDob ( 966086 )
      With games of the caliber of GoW, it's a tad more complex than that, unfortunately.

      Ever thought why Halo 1 on PC required PC specs that were more than double the hardware of the original XBOX on which it also ran? The XBOX was very similar to a regular PC, so just recompiling the whole thing should have just worked right?

      Merely "recompiling" won't do a good game. You have to redo the controls, adjust the sensitivity of the aim for mouse/keyboard AND change the way graphics are displayed.

      Yes, the Unreal engi
      • Except that you're talking to someone who uses the Unreal 3 Engine at work, and your point misfires.

        Halo 1 required a higher spec pc than the xbox partly because of the resolution it runs at on the xbox (i.e. 640x480 interlaced) vs. the resolution that most people run pc games at, partly because it doesn't get direct access to the hardware and has to go through drivers, and partly because it has to give some cpu cycles to other programs in order to play nice with windows.

        The unreal engine requires all game
  • Something to keep in mind is that differences between Console games and PC games are primarily design decision - not technical/programming specs.

    Consider how much of the console development is actually done on the PC ? Consoles do not have some magic Console++ programming language - most of the development is done on the PC itself. Sure, the extensions/libraries might be different but we're not talking about a total code re-write just to make a port from console to PC.

    What I think is the major difference b

  • Not a challenge (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rtechie ( 244489 ) on Friday February 16, 2007 @01:45AM (#18035240)
    "The big challenge is to make a game that was designed solely for the console, to take advantage of every last little corner of that console, to fill every little crack and run as many threads as we could and do as much to exploit the power of that machine, and make it run well on enough PCs to be worth releasing. That's a challenge."

    This is a bunch of crap. This is easy. You just stall.

    The cutting edge of PC graphical and computing power is constantly moving forward, at a pace far faster than consoles (new video cards come out every 6 MONTHS instead of 6 YEARS). This has traditionally meant that console ports, given the 18 to 24 months usually taken to port, are always widely playable on "gamer" PCs at the time of release.

    Take Halo for example. XBOX version released in Nov 2001, PC version released Sep 2003, about 2 years later. What were the minimum system requirements?

    System: 733MHz or equivalent
    RAM: 128 MB
    Video Memory: 32 MB

    These requirements exceed the system capabilities of the XBOX (and they're directly comparable as the XBOX is basically a PC), but were met even by entry-level PCs at the time. Of course it ran better (higher resolutions, etc.) on faster hardware, but "gamer" PCs were considerably faster than 733mhz at the time and they're usually the target market for console ports. Certainly this is the target market for Gears of War.

    • Hey, a little fact here for you, Halo was in Developement for 2 years for PC, it would have been more or less a straight port as has been mentioned, and would have been even simpler due to the fact that the Xbox uses a hacked up DX and Windows Kernel. The system requirements, while higher than the Xboxes, are actually quite low really, and the only reason the Xbox could play it is due to optimisation. Wouldn't it be ALOT easier to make shirts for everyone on the planet if they all took a Small? Thats more o

  • With Microsoft's 'ownership' of both the 360 and PC platforms

    If Microsoft gains control of the console market through the XBox 360, it will have control over development, the platform, and online services. Gamers everywhere should be wary to support Microsoft's XBox 360. Sony may be evil, but they're also pretty stupid - Microsoft, on the other hand, is evil and sneaky - they've established a system where gamers will be hesitant to leave the XBox platform (XBox Live) because all their friends are on it.

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