Gear up and get ready to move out soldier! Tomorrow June 14 at 2am GMT, Gears of War goes into overdrive with 8 new achievements available for the “Annex” and the “Hidden Fronts” Multiplayer Map Pack in the new update on Xbox LIVE..

Not only are the new achievements worth an extra 250 points to your gaming rep, Epic has improved the Roadie Run controls so that it will be easier than ever to mow down the opposition. The update will also improve multiplayer exploits and take care of some general housekeeping.

For those who haven’t already signed up the “Annex” gametype is available for free and the “Hidden Fronts” Multiplayer Map Pack is available on Xbox LIVE® Marketplace for 800 Microsoft Points. The best news is that starting Sept 3, 2007 all four multiplayer maps will be available for free on Xbox LIVE. Now move out!

It’s easy to be critical about a game. Typing “THE GRAFIX SUKS” in all caps on a forum takes hardly any effort at all. What we sometimes do not realize is somewhere out there is a team of people that spent countless hours working to create those graphics. Even if the graphics are below average, an amazing amount of effort was put forth to produce them. I have had my hand in making games in the past, and I can be totally sympathetic to the challenges of the industry. But who are these mysterious developers? Where did they come from? What are they working on now? Those are the questions that I hope to answer.

Who are they? Epic Games

When were they founded? 1991

Where are they now? Cary, North Carolina

How do I know them? One Must Fall: 2097, Unreal Series, Gears of War

What are they working on? Unreal Tournament III

What does Unreal Tournament III look like?

Anything else we should know? Epic Games’ lead designer Steven Polge recently described Unreal Tournament III as “Gears of War on crack.”

Count this as an obscure article – at least for we American readers – but Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games, talked with German PG Games Hardware magazine a few weeks back about some of the enhancements in the Unreal Engine, DirectX 10 support and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3. Sweeney also mentioned how Gears of War’s development has influenced the Unreal sequel:

PCGH: Are there any things you learned while developing Gears of War for next gen consoles that you can now benefit from when finalizing UT 3 for the PC?

Tim Sweeney: The Gears of War experience on Xbox 360 taught us to optimize for multi-core, and to improve the low-level performance of the key engine systems. This has carried over very well to PC. The division of UE3’s rendering and gameplay into separate threads, implemented originally for 360, has brought even more significant gains on PC where there is a more heavyweight hardware abstraction layer in DirectX, hence more CPU time spent in rendering relative to gameplay.

Also, the 360 work we did resulted in an engine that also runs well on low-end and mid-range PCs. This is very important for games today; the high-end PC gaming market alone is not big enough to support next-generation games with budgets in the $10-20M range. You need to run on ordinary mass-market PCs as well. In reading PC gaming websites, one might get the impression that everyone owns a dual-core PC with a pair of $600 GPUs in SLI configuration, but the reality is very different. More than 80% of PCs sold today are still single-core, and have very low-end DirectX9 graphics capabilities. Unreal Engine 3 supports those configurations well.

There really isn’t a lot of solid info but the Gears of War and Unreal Engine information is at least interesting for hardware minded folks.

Epic’s Mark Rein recently got upset over the rumors that Gears of War might be ported to the PS3, calling it BS. In fact, he says, the developer is very happy with Microsoft:

“This story is complete bull****. I emailed the site and asked them to take it down. We’re very happy with our relationship with Microsoft. If it weren’t for them Gears wouldn’t be the huge hit it has become.”

Sorry, Playstation. Score one for Microsoft. Frankly though, I can see why they’d want to stand behind Microsoft. Gears of War pretty much of the biggest reasons to own an X-Box, next to Halo 3, and Microsoft deserves some credit for hyping it up so Epic could deliver the goods.

A featured article in the latest Official Xbox Magazine has revealed some new details about Unreal Tournament 3. Epic games has set the release date around October 2007, and it looks like they are on track to release on time. Some of the new features mentioned in the article include 4 player co-op, confirmation of 18 new vehicles, and the inclusion of hover boards. Unreal Tournament 3 will also feature cross-play between the Xbox360 and PC versions. When asked about the disparities between an controller and a keyboard/mouse, Epic Games stated that the controls on the Xbox360 version are so good that half of the staff prefers the controller. Check below for some gameplay footage from the GDC.

There are many gaming titles in this world that I would like to play, but I refuse to pay $40 or more on something that I am sure I will never play again. Granted, anything Zelda, Morrowind, Silent Hill, Kratos or Mario Cart related, I just hand over my wallet and say thank you very much. Games like Fatal Frame, Condemned, Clock Tower, or The Mark of Kri, well you either rent those or you buy them used. When you finally decide that you have enough coasters and could use some cash or a new game though, you take it down to your local game store and either trade, get credit, or sell it out right. Everyone has done this, and it works well for the consumer. This, however, could change and it already has in some states.

Call it, the Brady Bill of Gaming if you will. What it boils down to is this: a mandatory 15-30-day period before the used game can be resold. WHAAAAA???? Yep. It is already a fact in Florida, Utah, and Toledo, and Ohio – although different cities and areas may vary. It is pending in Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Stores such as Gamestop and EB Games enjoy a 50% profit margin on sales of used video games. What this means for the consumer, is that the impatient (aren’t we all?) will have to pay full price for a new game, and the publishers will no longer miss out on the “used” sale. This puts the gaming stores in the same category as a pawnshop. Maybe some crazy entrepreneur will combine the two one day, and you will able to pawn your wedding bands and used beta and cassette players while purchasing a nice used Commodore 64 or Super NES game. That is all I see at pawnshops around here anyway. Who knows, maybe we will see Kratos sitting next to a display of gold nugget rings someday.

Ever since Epic announced that the Unreal Engine 3 was available for licensing, we’ve been waiting to see who would get their hands on it. The force behind the scenes of Gears of War, the Unreal Engine 3 is a powerful, flexible framework on which to build just about any game.

The latest developer to join the fray is SEGA. Today, they announced that they have licensed the engine for several upcoming, unannounced titles. Simon Jeffery of SEGA of America said, “SEGA is pleased to arm our developers with the sophisticated tools contained in Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3. Its versatility and power will help SEGA create incredible gaming experiences.”

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In an effort to prove to a Korean developer that the Unreal Engine 3 could be used to make casual games, Epic Games launched an internal spin-off project: Gears of War Golf!

They took Marcus Fenix from Gear, and put him on the links. After that, says Epic’s Mark Rein, “We got an animator to make a golf swing for Marcus Fenix, and then a programmer took one of the Gears levels and added some mounds and stuff to make a course.”
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CGSociety is profiling Kevin Lanning, who you may not know, but might definitely recognize his work on God of War for the Xbox 360.

It’s always awesome to read up on how people got involved in the video game industry, and can even be a jumping off point for you if you’re looking for ways to get in yourself.

“I was contacted by Floyd Bishop at Ice Pond Studios to do some character work on a ‘GI JOE’ commercial they were subcontracting for,” Lanning says in the CGSociety feature. “I had a blast working on that project. In my eyes, this was the first real production work that I had done.”

Aside from the profile, there is some really awesome artwork. Give it a look.

In his most recent podcast, Major Nelson, a well known XBox PR outlet, has said that Epic Games cost Microsoft a BILLION dollars. Apparently, Epic Games was single-handedly responsible for the decision to include a 512 MB RAM chip in the 360, rather than a (supposedly) proposed 256 MB chip. This was brought up in relation to the recent debate over Microsoft charging for the Gears of War Map Pack. You might remember, Epic Games felt that the map pack should have been provided for free, and Microsoft wanted to charge for it.

Maybe it’s just me, but if Microsoft is allowing a single developer to chart the course of their console development, they need to take a long, hard look at their development process. Now, if Epic said, “Hey Microsoft, we really need 512 MB of RAM in this console so that we can make some seriously great games that will help sell your XBox 360,” and Microsoft said, “Hey, sounds good to us,” then what’s the problem here? Microsoft benefits by more console sales and associated hardware, Epic gets to make Gears (which rocks) and reap the rewards from that.
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