14 DAY TRIAL // A trademark filling from Epic Games suggests that, parallel to working on the upcoming third person shooter Gears of War 3, the company is developing a yet unannounced project that bears the name Exile, which could be officially unveiled before the end of the year.
The trademark filling comes with an attached logo, which can be seen linked to this article, and the overall look suggests that the new product is an actual video game, with the logo having the same overall structure as those for the already launched Gears of War series.
The trademark listing was spotted by Siliconers and when Epic Games was contacted about it, a representative has stated “We have no news to share at this time” and refused to offer any more information about it.
Epic Games was set to make a big announcement at the VGA ceremony in late December 2010, but at the last possible time Microsoft seems to have pulled the plug on the reveal, with no official explanation given to fans who were expecting to see the future of Gears of War video games.
Cliff Blezinski, who is usually very outspoken about his games, then said, “There's a lot of strategising going on and at any point something may shift due to a strategic move that needs to happen. So I came out here potentially announcing something. It turns out the timing's not right.”
Gears of War is so big for Microsoft and the Xbox 360, on which it is exclusively released, that speculation has been mounting that a title that uses the new Kinect motion tracking system is being prepared to give the add-on some credibility among more hardcore gamers.
Of course, there's always a chance that Exile is just the first downloadable content package that will be released for Gears of War 3 sometimes towards the end of the year or that it is another novel set in the same universe.