Cliff Bleszinski

about Gears of War 2 after they'd spent a little

with the Xbox 360 exclusive title. He talks about lots of Gears stuff, of course, but one of the more interesting quips comes when he is asked about what Microsoft could do better when creating an Xbox 360 sequel.

We talk to them about a lot of things, and when I say the next controller could have less buttons I mean it, because we could have done Gears without some of them. We could have done a context-sensitive thing where the [Y] Button could have been [X] when there’s nothing else around or something.

You could do all sorts of things in lieu of buttons, like maybe voice control commands or cameras that allow you to move your hands with a little motion control. Those other things supplement the experience – I think games designers need to be smart about context-sensitivity and analysing the complexity of controls, as well as being very forgiving with tutorials.

And further cementing

earlier in the year that Gears of War 2 would not see the light of day on the PC, he offers this observation on the PC gaming scene:

There’s not a lot to say right now for the PC industry. The PC market is in a very interesting situation right now, what with the availability of all these different video cards, piracy and things like that. At this current point for us, it just makes sense to focus on the 360 in regard to Gears and our development efforts.

As a side note to all of this, regardless of what’s going on with Spore and all that, I’ve come to believe that the kind of person who’s savvy enough to have a high-end PC – to upgrade it, to figure the ins and outs of it and to make sure he has a solid system – probably knows what BitTorrent is. That’s all I’m saying.

And

he reaffirms the above sentiment and pretty much tosses a shovelfull of dirt on the grave of Gears on the PC:

TVG: But when the dust has settled, is there any possibility of Gears 2 on PC?

Cliff: No