14 DAY TRIAL // Until the arrival of Modern Warfare 1 and 2, the Gears of War series had been the most important franchise of the Xbox 360, demonstrating both the capabilities of the Microsoft made home console and fulfilling the power fantasies of its core audience.
But despite the huge profits that developers Epic made from their partnership with Microsoft, analyst Michael Pachter, who works for Wesbush Morgan, recently said that the Gears of War series could have been even bigger if it had also been released on the PlayStation 3. Referring to Gears of War 3, he claimed that “I think that Microsoft has a contract to make sure that they get but I think Epic regrets signing the contract.”
Mark Rein, who is a vice president at Epic Games, told IGN after Pachter's remarks that “We have a great relationship with Microsoft and we have no regrets.” He would offer no further comments on the statement made by the analyst.
Pachter claimed that a move to the PlayStation 3 would have assured another 3 to 4 million in sales for Gears of War, which is quite a high number. One the other hand, a move to the PS3 would have meant extra development time for the two games, which arrived pretty quickly on the Xbox 360 in order to capitalize on the release momentum, and could have resulted in more limited quality for both platforms.
Epic Games is currently not talking about Gears of War 3, which is rumored to be the final videogames released in the series. Some say that the title will be unveiled at the E3 trade show in June with the release coming during the winter holiday season but that would mean a launch close to another Call of Duty title, which Microsoft would probably want to avoid.