MS, Epic Butt Heads Over Gears Maps

One of them wants to give the maps away, the other wants your cash.

With more than 3 million sales since it debuted in November, Gears of War has been a massive success for both Microsoft and developer Epic Games. How the relationship with players will be extended is, however, something the two do not disagree on.

In addition to the free Annex gameplay mode (see screenshots) out this week, Epic has also created four new maps, which it is planning to release on the Xbox Live Marketplace later this year. The problem: Epic wants to give the maps away - Microsoft wants to charge for them.

In the end, the two companies have come to what Epic's Mark Rein calls a "fair compromise".

"What we've agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later," Rein said in a post on the Evil Avatar forums, following a discussion on the topic on the 1Up Yours podcast.

"[Microsoft] did this with the original Halo 2 map pack and it was a huge success."

Rein pointed out that as the publisher of the game and the owner of the Marketplace online store, Microsoft is in a position to call the shots.

Ultimately, downloadable content is a step forward for the industry and for gamers, Rein said.

"As Tim Sweeney and I said in the podcast, we want the download economy to work - it is something the industry needs, something we hope to use in the future, something that will help bring more variety to end-users and ultimately could help bring prices down for end-users.

"If we had to put this map pack on a disc and sell it in retail it would be more expensive to end-users and maybe we wouldn't have done it because of all the extra work and cost involved."

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo