Mark Rein begs to differ on Ortega's statements

Feb 13, 2009 20:21 GMT  ·  By

Gears of War is one of the most popular franchises from the new surge of high-quality titles. While the first one really got people into the Xbox 360, the sequel, which was launched before last year's holiday season, managed to sell a whopping amount of over 4 million units. With such a great franchise under its belt, Epic Games will surely take good care of it.

That was the point that the writer of the game, Joshua Ortega, made at the New York Comic Convention, when he accidentally let it slip that the franchise already had the next ten years planned out in terms of development and story. Such a statement was received with mixed reactions, but now the vice president of Epic Games, Mark Rein, has decided to clear things up.

Gears of War doesn't have a ten-year plan, and while Ortega's excitement was understandable, the development team really listens to gamers and gets the main ideas from the fans of the franchise. While he didn't exclude the possibility of a prequel, Rein says that currently the team is focused on fixing any problems that Gears of War 2 currently has.

“In this industry you can’t plan games very far in advance,” said Rein. “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. We’re working on the next title update for Gears of War 2 right now. When this title update is done we’ll start planning the next title update for Gears of War 2.”

So it seems that things aren't as planned out as Ortega led a lot of fans to believe. While it’s nice to hear that Epic Games wants to solve the big number of user complaints about Gears of War 2, a slight teaser about the future of the series would have been more than welcomed.