UPDATE: Epic Games Senior PR and Communications Manager Nick Chester gave us the following statement via email about the alleged Gears of War 3 PS3 footage:
“This footage is a byproduct of Epic’s internal Unreal Engine 3 testing process, which utilized both Gears and Unreal Tournament, and was never part of any actual product work for PlayStation 3.”
Gears of War has always been synonymous with Microsoft and the Xbox, but recent leaked footage shows that that wasn’t always the way. Some alleged Gears of War 3 PS3 footage has recently surfaced on YouTube, revealing how the cover shooter played on Sony’s last-generation console. Executive Producer Rod Fergusson and Design Director Cliff Bleszinski did not respond when reached for comment. However, Bleszinkski did later say he thought it was fake.
This footage showed up via YouTube user Proto, the same person who also had Gears 3 PS3 gameplay in December 2016 (who is also known as PixelButts on Twitter). In it, they play through pretty much the entire game at a pretty low frame rate, which makes sense as they claim the build is from May 19, 2011, four months before its final release on the Xbox 360. However, the X button isn’t on the bottom of the pad, but the left and that makes it hard to pin down if this is a true PS3 version or not. Despite this, Proto was adamant that it was the real thing.
“It’s the real deal,” they state in the video’s description. “This is an Epic-made build of Gears of War 3 for PS3. This build is dated May 19 2011, and is the only build of this ever located. As far as I know I’m also the only person with a working build of this particular data as well. I don’t know why it exists, I dont know why it was made. All I can do is speculate.”
Proto claimed it was running on a PS3 devkit unit, which are naturally outfitted with extra RAM. They also stated that split-screen and multiplayer works “with the right commands,” but it can’t connect to the internet. Proto said that this data was taken from the 2011 Epic hack. That aforementioned 2016 footage, according to them, is from hacked source code that was recreated for Sony’s console.
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This new stuff, however, is straight from Epic. A source told Kotaku that Epic compiled Gears 3 on the PS3 on a daily basis, but that could have been easier than just doing the 360 version, given how simple it is for the Unreal Engine to compile two renditions of the game.
