14 DAY TRIAL // Jim Brown, the lead level designer working on Gears of War: Judgment, says that the Xbox 360 home console can still offer more performance to those teams who have long-term plans for it, despite the impending announcement of the new device from Microsoft.
The developer tells The Official Xbox Magazine that, “When we first released Gears of War, the first one, people were like ‘woah, they’re pushing the Xbox to its limits, they’re doing crazy things’ – and every single time we’ve been able to step it up and find some corner of the 360 that no one was aware of and more areas for us to push.”
The new Judgment introduces more enemies than all other entries in the series, action sequences with added complexity and a bigger visual spectacle.
Waylon Brinck, the art director at People Can Fly, adds, “It’s the most colourful Gears game ever, which feels weird to say. But I think it also has the richest darkest mood out of any Gears game since the first one. So yeah, it was all hands on deck optimizing this thing, we squeezed a lot more out of it.”
The developer seems to believe that the Xbox 360 and the next-gen device from Microsoft could exist side by side and deliver different types of experiences for different audiences.
Rumors suggest that the Xbox 720 will be first shown publicly towards the end of April and that its architecture will be widely comparable to that of the PlayStation 4 from Sony.
Fans also believe that Epic Games is already using its new Unreal Engine 4 to work on a new Gears of War title that will be exclusive to the Xbox 720.
Judgment is designed to serve as a prequel to the series, telling a number of stories linked to Emergence Day and the first Locust assault.