In an interview with OXM UK, Rein says he also considers Unreal the "economic engine of Natal," the platform upon which developers should go to if they "want to get a big headstart and use the same tech as Microsoft." Sounds official enough to us.

Rein also says that, going forward, don't be surprised if you see Natal's motion and voice detection control schemes in future Epic Games titles.

"I have no idea what we're going to do from a game standpoint, but from an engine standpoint, it's definitely cool stuff, and we will support it," he says. "I think any future Xbox games we make will have some Natal support."

Mark Rein Interview [OXM UK via GameSpot]

Sure, you may game on a HD set. I know I do. But in an interview with Eurogamer, Epic's Mark Rein has revealed that "Over half the users who played Gears of War 2 so far do not have HDTVs".

That's, uh, a lot. Millions of people. No wonder these console manufacturers keep banging on about a ten-year lifecycle; it's going to take that long for people to upgrade to a HDTV.

Epic's Mark Rein [Eurogamer]

"People talk about, 'The Wii has run away with this generation.' I don't think that's true," Rein told game site Eurogamer. "Nintendo's made a lot of money and the software developers on that platform are scratching for seconds. Microsoft is clearly a big market for third-party games. PS3 has a smaller installed base, but it's still millions of users."

But Nintendo has sold a gajillion Wiis! The install base is so impressive. Rein is more impressed apparently with Microsoft's Natal controller.

"The whole concept of playing a game without a controller is very intriguing," he said. "Take EA Sports Active on the Wii. It's a great game but it's not very compelling to have to have all that extra hardware attached to your body. If you made a game like that for Natal — and I'm sure EA is doing it - Natal could just look at you and tell if you're doing the exercises properly." Anything could be your controller, the exec added.

Epic's Mark Rein Interview [Eurogamer via GoNintendo]

"Honestly, I really think it's a marketing thing," says Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li actress Kristen Kreuk. "There's a built-in audience. But realistically, if you are trying to sell a film, you have a huge audience already."

Case-in-point: Max Payne. While it was generally panned by critics, the movie took the box office's No. 1 spot during its opening weekend and ended up turning a profit of around $50 million.

"It's the same as with sports," explains David Jaffe, creator of God of War. "If you're a sports fan and the home team is losing, you'll see the game in the hope your team will turn it around."

One day, Hollywood will. Epic exec Mark Rein is optimistic, stating that big time movie producers like Jerry Bruckheimer, Peter Jackson and Thomas Tull are taking them seriously and treating them with importance.

"If you treat your material with importance then filmgoers will take it seriously. Did you ever think a theme-park ride would make a great movie? Jerry Bruckheimer did," Rein said, "and he made three awesome movies based on it (the Pirates of the Caribbean series). Now he's working with Prince of Persia. Peter Jackson created three movies based on a taking a classic fantasy novel seriously and won a Best Picture Oscar. Now he's working with Halo. Thomas Tull reinvented Batman and Superman and now has one of the biggest movies ever with The Dark Knight, and now he's working with Gears of War and World of Warcraft. So yes, I see good to reasons to be very optimistic about the film versions of these and other games."

Adapting games has proven hard, but Hollywood will figure out how to do it. As Jaffe pointed out, "Comic books are much easier to adapt into movies because they are traditional story telling. Games are harder to adapt because at their very core, they're games."

Hollywood's passion for the video game [Japan Times] [Pic]

Not really, apparently. Epic exec Mark Rein explains: "In this industry you can't plan games very far in advance. We appreciate the enthusiasm Josh has for our franchise but we don't have a ten-year plan. We always have ideas of where we'd like it to go but it's determined on a game-by-game basis and ultimately by fan support. Our focus right now is supporting the Gears of War 2 game and community."

But is the lancer the new lightsaber?

Epic boss: There is no 10-year plan for Gears of War [VG247 via 1UP]

Mark Rein, vice president of Epic, confirmed the accomplishment to Edge Online. He wrote that Gears of War 2 passed the three million mark last week, less than half the time it took the original to reach that goal which ultimately went on to move more than 4.7 million copies.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet one zillion dollars that someone, somewhere is thinking that a Gears of War 3 is a pretty good idea.

Confirmed: Gears 2 Passes 3M [Edge Online]

Rein didn't apparently provide any further details, such as platform, price or planned delivery date. But we hope the armor will be much, much bigger in Unreal Tournament 3: Major Expansion but doesn't go so far as to cover up the cleavage of any of the in-game combatants. That wouldn't be right.

Rein outs "major expansion" for UT3 [Eurogamer]

Microsoft doesn’t show Gears 2 at Leipzig because they don’t sell the game in Germany.

Gears of War 2 won't be sold in Germany due to the country's restrictions on game violence. Bummer.

Rein confirms Gears 2 as Leipzig no-show [VG247]

The best part of the article comes at the end, where they mention the people they want to hear more from. They need to just sit Tim Shafer down in front of a PA system and have him deliver a running commentary for the entire length of the show.

The 10 People We Hope Will Shut the F*** Up at This Year's E3 [Crispy Gamer]

No we don't have any plans to make something for the Wii. That's like asking a sculptor when he's going to start painting. That's just not our medium. That's not our area of expertise — our area of expertise is the more high-end consoles and things that push technology higher. That's what we do — there's a lot more water in that well for us, when that runs dry then maybe we'd have to think of doing something else but I don't think that well is going to run dry anytime soon.

What, no Gears of War party games? Epic, you guys are just turning your backs on heaps of money. Elsewhere in that same interview, Rein says using the stereoscopic 3D Ubisoft is exploring with James Cameron's Avatar is "dumb" — even though Unreal has been able to run stereoscopic 3D "for a long time." The reason being is that it costs so much to buy a stereoscopic monitor. Guess that would make it "expensive" and not "dumb", then...

Using 3D technology is "dumb", says Rein [Games Industry] [Pic]

Digital distribution is not a replacement for a publisher...They'll be paying for marketing just like they do for positioning in a store. The big publishers are going to own the front of those online stores.

Some Publisher Contracts "Borderline Illegal" [Next-Gen]

We're still trying. We're working with Microsoft to try to figure out how to support it, but regardless of what happens, mods will play a part somewhere along the line. We'll make sure we get a fair share of mods working. We'll figure that out.

Awesome... I've had a chance to read the Game Informer story now and I think when people get a chance to read it they'll see that [Gears 2 is] really good. And we told the Game Informer guys just a tidbit about the game. We showed them some stuff, obviously, but we're keeping a lot of information back that will make people go, 'It's even better than this.' As good as they say it is, and they really, really like it, there's still a lot of story to open up between now and when the game ships in November... I think people will really enjoy this game.

When we heard he was coming we were like 'oh no, we're gonna get killed!' But he was over the moon, we're chuffed about it... We're obviously an Unreal Engine 3 licensee and he just came in for a visit and said 'oh my god, I can't believe you're working on this, it looks phenomenal'. That was it; it wasn't anything particularly formal, he came in to say hello to his licensees and was blown away by it. That was great for us.

MR: We want all these people buying laptops and reasonably priced PCs, to at least be able to be exposed to gaming. They can go out later and upgrade to something better, but let's at least give them a baseline experience."

MTV: Cliff, you buy it? PC gaming is back?

The Cliffster: Abso-frigging-lutely. The thing is, I think everybody coming together in that kind of way will essentially kind of help re-glue things back together and kind of help fix the market. I have a big PC gaming heritage and I love playing games with a keyboard and a mouse, as well as a console, and I'd just love to see it.

I have not seen the actual GamePro article but if they're going to make predictions about us selling Epic we would prefer if they started at $2 billion. Because we don't want anyone thinking that we're cheap.

It is complete nonsense. We have not announced a sequel to Gears of War to Gamepro or anyone else for that matter.

Gear Of War 2 [Announced?] In Special Report In Next GamePro [Epic via NextGeneration]

...we're hopeful. Microsoft hasn't said "no" yet, but then they haven't said "yes" either. We need them to say "yes," and we need them to do it soon.

If it doesn't work out with Xbox 360, depending on sales of the game on that platform, I imagine we'll find a few of the best mods and get them on Xbox Live Marketplace. I don't think 360 users are going to suffer drastically - they're just going to miss out on a lot of crazy, cool fun stuff and the ability to exchange it among themselves. They may also end up paying for content that is free on other systems because Microsoft now has to host it and certify it.

We love making shooters, and I'm certain there are still countless ways we can improve in that genre. We look at Gears of War and we see the pimples, we look at UT3 and think 'we should also do this, we should also try that, if only we had more time and more people, we could have done...' so I think we're continually looking at our own games and thinking there are lots of unfinished puzzles left to solve before we move on to something else... There's still a lot of low hanging fruit in this genre — we need to pick some more of that.

It is amazing how people can look at two weeks of sales (in our case) in one single territory in the busiest Xmas sales season the industry has ever seen and come to the conclusion these titles are doing "badly". I don't think either title is doing so badly.

Crysis probably has 3-4x the marketing budget of UT3 and more mindshare because it is a PC-only, high-end, single-player oriented game. This isn't the fastest selling UT title ever but it's doing pretty well and we're going to support it with some pretty cool things to help it keep selling over time.

Mark Rein answers your questions! [via cvg][image: gettyimages]