14 DAY TRIAL // After the Infinity Ward-Activision Blizzard conflict, with the main creative minds at the company laid off and law suits being thrown around by the two sides, players started looking at other long time developer-publisher relationships and wonder whether something similar could be possible. And some developers have been quick to talk about the situation they are in and about the control they have over their own franchises.
Mark Rein, who is a vice president at Epic Games and one of the spokesmen for the developer, told VG247 at the Games Developer Conference that “We own Gears of War. We can do what we want with it. We have a great relationship with Microsoft, and they helped turn the game into a huge success for us, and we are pretty happy with the way things are going.”
The Epic man also said that his company was involved with Electronic Arts for a new intellectual property and that soon more details about it would be made public.
The main point of dispute between Jason West and Vince Zampella, and Activision Blizzard seems to have been the control over the Call of Duty franchise and the Modern Warfare name, with rumors saying that the Infinity Ward pair were planning to create a new, independent company that would create fresh games using the brands.
Epic Games has not been talking about what they are currently working on but rumors are saying that Gears of War 3 will be first shown off at this year's E3, with the launch coming in time for the holiday season. The company has been quite tight-lipped about the project, revealing solely that the Gears of War franchise is a long term project that at some point might involve a prequel showing off the circumstances of the first Locust assault, also known as Emergence Day.