Gears of War: why no cross-platform play, more PC details

In an interview with Epic Games‘ designer Cliffy B, he explains why the recently-released PC version of Gears of War didn’t support cross-platform play with the Xbox 360. He also goes on to explain what’s different in the PC version, like why you can now fight Brumack and how they managed to explain a story gap that was present in the Xbox 360 version. Read about it in the full article.

In an interview with Epic Games‘ designer Cliffy B, he explains why the recently-released PC version of Gears of War didn’t support cross-platform play with the Xbox 360. He also goes on to explain what’s different in the PC version.

There are two simple reason why Epic Games wasn’t able to provide support for cross-platform gaming between the Xbox 360 and PC version of Gears of War. The first reason is time. The second is controls.

For the first reason, Cliffy B explains that if Epic decided to do it, they wanted to do it right. However, they aimed to get the PC version out in time for the holiday seasons and there just wasn’t enough time.

For the second reason, he explains that a gamer playing on the Xbox 360 versus one playing on the PC just won’t be evenly matched. The bottom line is that right now an analogue stick player can’t hold against a keyboard and a mouse.

Cliffy B explains that it would take about a year to develop cross-platform gaming. This is probably already taking into account Mark Rein‘s former statement with how the two platforms are incompatible.

Cliffy then explains why Brumack is now a playable character. There’s also a simple reason for this. Fans wanted it and it was a “no-brainer” when they decided to add him. The five new chapters in the PC version are there to explain some story gaps that “didn’t really come through that well in the 360 version”:

The problem was that we had this whole set-up, where the premise of the original game was that it was Operation Lethal Injection. What they were doing was that they needed mapping data to strike back and bomb the Hollow and the veins of Imulsion. But they didnÂ’t really have the data to do it. Luckily, Marcus [Phoenix]Â’s dad had done a little bit of research that helped. But it was never really explained that the bomb got put on this train and then the train was going to be sent into the sinkhole, but then the train got highjacked by a bunch of locusts and then you actually have to take the train back.

Via SPOnG