EPIC Have No Regrets On [Gears of War] Exclusivity

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It has been awhile since I had paid attention to my beloved Gears of War series. You see I happen to live in South Africa and despite being a 32 year-old male, I happen to fall into a “region” that is blocked for the Gears map-pack. So when the rest of the world got to play these wonderful new maps I was stuck with the old ones. I know that “IT whiz’s” have figured out a way around this but the word IT still refers to a Stephen King book come movie. So I retired my precious copy of Gears of War 2 as most people are playing these ‘region blocked’ maps and nobody wants to be the odd one out.

When the word ‘exclusive’ is mentioned though it grabs my attention as it is a reminder of the fact that I cannot play games like Uncharted 2 and God of War 3. Michael Pachter, an analyst from Wedbush Morgan told GTTV he believed that Epic Games was regretful for signing a long term exclusive deal with Microsoft for the Gears series. He also believes the franchise could have been even bigger had it been released to the PlayStation 3 as well.

“I think that Microsoft has a contract to make sure that they get [Gears of War 3], but I think Epic regrets signing the contract. You’re up to 11 million PS3s in the U.S. and probably a similar number in Europe. You’ve got a 20 million addressable market with a game like Gears of War? That thing would easily sell three or four million on the PS3. That’s a lot of profit” he said.

Now the Epic Games VP, Mark Rein has responded in an interview with IGN that EPIC is comfortable with its current situation with Microsoft, and that “We [EPIC] have a great relationship with Microsoft and we have no regrets.”

[Source]