Eurogamer

Epic Games would love to release a Gears of War title every year, a la Call of Duty, according to the developer's vice president Mark Rein.

"I think if we felt we could and do justice to it, who wouldn't want to have a yearly [Gears of War]?" he told Eurogamer at this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, before explaining how much he admired Activision's FPS business model.

"I really envy what they have with Call of Duty. Every year they put out something really great and they sell crazy stupid amounts. Anybody who says they wouldn't want to emulate that shouldn't be in business.

The main thing preventing Epic from following suit, Rein suggested, was limited resources.

"We're not that big a studio, so if we were going to do that it would be because we thought we could deliver something that was of real additive value. They have two teams so they can go back and forth.

"I would never rule it out. I would love to do it. If we could come up with an experience that a year later was worthy of the Gears name, why wouldn't we want to do that?

"We're about as far as we want to be away from Gears. The further you get away, people start forgetting you. We've been pretty fortunate – people play our games for a long time.

When asked whether over-saturation might then weaken the appeal of the franchise, Rein explained that as long as the quality stayed high that wasn't an issue.

"Well, I've been pretty happy with each Call of Duty game," he responded.

"I buy NHL Hockey every year and I've never felt like this isn't enough over last year's. I just buy it and enjoy it each time. I don't really have any philosophical thing against that. As long as it's good value and a good customer experience, why wouldn't you? I envy what they're doing, it's just brilliant."

While on the topic of Call of Duty, Rein went on to stick up for the man gamers love to hate – rabble rousing Activision top dog Bobby Kotick.

"I've talked to him once or twice – I don't know him that well - but he seems like a really nice guy. The times I've spoken to him I was very impressed. He seemed very smart to me.

"Y'know, he's like me," he continued. "He likes to talk and sometimes we get ourselves in trouble. Sometimes you get in trouble for telling people what you really think – they don't always want to hear it."

The latest entry in the Gears of War saga - the first since November 2008 - hits Xbox 360 on 20th September.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-03-epic-vp-would-love-annual-gears-of-war

Considering call of duty can make each new campaign have different protaginists and go to very different tmes and places they can get away with making a game every year for now.

To keep a compelling story going in the Gears series seems a lot harder. I mean how long can you keep a story going about a bunch of beefy guys running around trying to save humanity.

Most games would suffer from this problem and I am glad for it because i like variety.

Like he says, if they can maintain the quality then it means more good games for us. Now how about that PS3 version Mark...

and have two different companies doing it... oh wait... did you see what I did there.

but as we know from yearly releases, improvements are minimal and in some cases make the game worse than its predecessor.

Actually, no.

You know that 2 different companies do the COD series don't you? I thought this was common knowledge... actually I think it is 3 now.

Epic is one company. They are also not just working on Gears of War, they are working on many many things. Two entirely different scenarios.

I know that, but I was saying I do not think they could keep a compelling story going on for long for Gears unless they started using different characters other than Marcus and Dom all the time. If epic had two studios I would rather see them do new projects like bulletstorm to keep that sweet smell of freshness in the industry.

I agree with that. The Universe is a universe but that one has a very limited story, Halo, Mass Effect etc huge huge storyline opportunities. Once the earth is saved... what we go over there... but isnt locusts home planet where we are... so in gears are we saving or conquering? I dont know, it doesnt matter. I got distracted.

Gears Universe is limited yes, annual series would be a leap unless they want to aim them for multiplayer like cod does and do the single player half baked.

more gears plz kthxbye