Epic Games wants their additional Gears of Wars maps to be free, just like the content they've provided for all their games on the PC side -- but Microsoft isn't down with that. In the effort of promoting a profitable marketplace, however, Microsoft's compromised with the studio by deciding to follow the successful model that Halo 2 pioneered a few years ago: the new Gears of War maps will be available for a to-be-determined fee, and made free a few months from now.
After speaking with our guys on 1UP Yours on Friday's podcast, Epic VP Mark Rein took to the Evil Avatar message boards to quiet the horde:
"Quite frankly Xbox Live Marketplace isn't our store. It's Microsoft's store. Like any retailer they have the right to figure out what goes on the shelves of their store and what price they sell it at. They spend the money to operate the store and deliver the content. They've also spent billions of dollars to create and build Xbox and subsidize it's the price so you can afford it and we can make games for it. As our publisher, they also invested tens of millions of dollars marketing Gears of War, and have done an awesome job for us, so they have a right to a good return on that investment."
Rein rationalizes that if they were to pursue releasing these maps at retail, it would actually cost significantly more than what's being attached on Xbox Live and "and maybe we wouldn't have done it because of all the extra work and cost involved."
What will be free, however, is the new Gears of War gametype 'Annex,' which Garnett outlined for you guys this morning with his own hands-on impressions.
Here's the stickler: how will Xbox 360 fans react when Unreal Tournament 3 launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC simultaneously, and they're potentially the only ones paying for new content? Hmm.