Game Stooge

Gears of War Maps Taking Halo Approach, Update Out Today

• Scribbled on April 9th, 2007 by Devin Grimes
• Filed in Microsoft Xbox 360, Mods and Total Conversions, Xbox Live Marketplace

In light of the controversy created when Epic’s Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein took a seat on the 1UP Yours podcast to vent their frustrations of Microsoft’s policies, Epic Games announced that they will be taking the Halo approach to the additional four maps they’ve produced by putting them up for sale initially then eventually making them free for download at a later date. Rein stated on the Gears message boards:

Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So 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.

It turns out that all the flip-flopping between the release date of the upcoming auto update for Gears of War was to no avail. Just as Epic previously stated in a press release, the update will start to hit Xbox Live at 4:00 P.M. PDT on a rolling update basis, which means you might not get the prompt right away. All the features and bug fixes are pretty much as is on how we previously reported, but the official lists confirms the following:

• VGA Cable Support: Monitor resolution widths greater than or equal to 1280 now render as letterbox. In particular VGA users running at 1280×1024 will now see the game in full 720p (1280×720) resolution in letterboxed form.
• Adjusted Assassination Multiplayer Gametype: Leader no longer has to unlock weapons and now has to be executed to die.
• Adjusted Boomshot: Splash damage to be more effective rendering targets down-but-not-out
• Adjusted Hammer of Dawn: Aiming will be more forgiving of moving targets
• Adjusted Roadie Run: Reduced frequency of accidently grabbing cover while running
• Kill Message Ticker: Ticker can now be seen while down-but-not-out and spectating
• General: Addressed a number of possible exploits in multiplayer

Be sure to keep an eye here on GameStooge for an official review of the new game mode: Annex later this week.

(Via Major Nelson, Kotaku.)