CliffyB Talks Up Gears of War for the PC

By Joe Haygood | September 29, 2007

CliffyB, gaming superstar and El Presidente of Epic Games, has been hard at work getting Gears of War up to speed to work for the PC. With some help from Tom and the folks at Gamerscore, we got the chance to hit up Cliffy for a little Q and A. All I have to say is that the guy speaks his mind and made me believe that he still knows that the PC market made the company and has not forgotten that. So hit the jump and read what is going on with Gears of War on the PC from the man himself.

Joe Haygood: What was the decision process to go with Gears of War for the PC? It seemed like an inevitable decision to make, but why so long in between the 360 and PC release?

CliffyB: Really, a year isn’t quite that long to wait for a big console hit like Gears to make its way to the PC. We wanted to establish this brand as a great Xbox title first and foremost and then let PC gamers play ‚Äì and more importantly modify the experience.

JH: We know that Gears of War will be supported on the new Vista platform as well as the older XP platform. Are there any differences between the two games beyond DirectX 10? Will there be things like co-op and multiplayer between 360 and PC platforms?

CliffyB: The game looks stellar on both Windows XP as well as Vista. While we love Vista and support Microsoft’s efforts we also wanted to make sure that we could reach the largest possible audience for the title and that meant supporting lower end machines that are often running XP. We’re not supporting cross platform play from 360 to PC. It’s a great feature to include but ultimately the inclusion would have meant pushing the release date further back and we feel that PC gamers are ready to chainsaw and craft in the Unreal Editor this holiday season!

JH: Most PC gamers, myself included, are happy to see that we get the added bonus of fighting the Brumak, why did you only include this for the PC players? Was there a coding issue that precludes this as being downloadable content. Or was a it a nice little gift for PC gamers being patient?

CliffyB: Porting this content to the Xbox 360 would have been prohibitive for the development team and honestly we wanted there to be several significant reasons for PC gamers to buy Gears on PC. The first reason is of course the five new chapters; the second is the new multiplayer content (three arenas and a gametype) and finally the shipping version of the Unreal Editor.

JH: What is going to happen after Gears of War for the PC is finished? Is it straight on to Gears of War 2, or some other new property? Do we have a solid release date for Gears of War on the PC, or is it still a moving target?

CliffyB: We’re currently looking at November for Gears of War landing on store shelves. The team is also crunching to ship Unreal Tournament 3 which is looking spectacular! After that I believe we‚Äôll all be taking a well deserved vacation in Tijuana. Then who knows, the sky’s the limit.

JH: Games for Windows LIVE support was touted as a big thing for Gears of War on the PC. How does adding this new service to the PC version of the game add to the gamers experience?

CliffyB: Games for Windows LIVE unifies the PC gaming experience so that developers do not all have to pursue their individual software solutions for buddy lists and matchmaking. Hooking it into Gears was relatively easy and we believe gamers are going to find it streamlines their online experience much like LIVE has been for console gamers for years now.

JH: Last question, but recently, you probably saw the announcement of Epic, entering into an agreement with Gamespy to provide a gaming experience similar to Games for Windows LIVE. How does this affect Gears of War and its link to Games for Windows LIVE?

CliffyB: We chose to use GameSpy for Unreal Tournament 3 for the same reason we chose to use Games for Windows LIVE for Gears of War. Each of them are excellent middleware for online play that allow us to leverage a game across both console and PC platforms. In the case of Gears, Games for Windows LIVE allows us to support Xbox 360 and PC and, in the case of UT3, GameSpy allows us to support PlayStation 3 and PC. For the companies who license our Unreal Engine 3, the underlying game engine for both games, that means we support both so they have more options to choose from.

JH: Thank you for your time and good luck with Gears of War, Games for Windows and Games for Windows LIVE. It is nice to see the PC getting some recognition from the developers again.

CliffyB: You‚Äôre welcome. We‚Äôve always been huge proponents of PC gaming and we’re very excited about what we’re bringing to the PC this fall!

1 Comment »

1. Comment by loopy — September 29, 2007 @ 7:03 pm

   Good interview, I’m glad to see more games going to PC from the consoles.

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