Gears of War Realm

Over the past two days it appears that a number of users have been contacted by a username of MFenix on Xbox Live. Most of these initial users were members of the Gears of War Official Forums.

Here is the text of the second message (image of the original image is on the right):

Thank you for your help. Don’t trust messages from anyone but myself and Dom. He’s using the covert name of LocustHordeH8r. They are everywhere, and even classified information sent here could be compromised. We’re working on a code. More tomorrow.

There is thought that this is some form of viral marking on the part of Microsoft and Epic Games. But with no official confirmation from either, other than crypic responses, we’re just having to sit back and wait to see what happens from here on out.

Could this be a prelude to the big news we were told about earlier in the week? Or is this just some big prank with some fan boys behind it? We’re not sure, but they’ve got our attention!

The gamertags associated with this story seem to be full of Friends now, so they can’t add anymore friends. So for more up to date information on these ongoing events, check out this great forum post by relyt9.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Mark Rein – VP of Gears of War maker Epic Games – revealed that Gears will receive a big performance boost with a new mult-threaded rendering engine. While everyone was ranting and raving about how great the demo shown at E3 2006 was, Epic seems to have some surprises in store when it comes to the graphics department.

“[The E3 demo] was using our single-threaded rendered. We have our new Gemini multi-threaded rendered working in the engine right now,” Rein explained. “The final game’s built on it, it gives us better frame rates and more fluidity – UT 2007 will also benefit from it. It only gets better from here. So if you were impressed with Gears of War at E3, the finished game’s going to be much better, it’s going to be spectacular.”

PS3 ‘in better place for launch’ than 360 – Mark Rein [Eurogamer]

Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games, obviously can’t contain himself with some big secret announcement involving Gears of War. He made a post over on the Epic Games’ Gears of War Forums about a BIG upcoming announcement next week.

What could this news be? Release date, new features, some big voice talent hired for the game? No one knows, but go ahead and comment below on your speculations while we wait patiently for this announcement to break.

Congratulations to our Gears of War Faceplate Contest winner Josh, who goes by Maxrealm on the Realm Media Network Forums. This week we shipped out his very own Gears of War faceplate to spice up his Xbox 360, just in time for the Gears of War release later this year.

Thanks goes out to everyone who entered the contest, and for the great comments on Gears of War. It was quite interesting to read everyone’s enthusiastic posts about the game, and why it excites you. I think you all will not be disappointed by the game from what I’ve seen, and it can’t be too far away now.

Stay tuned for our next big contest, which should kick off once we know the game’s release date. It’ll be a big contest that you’ll have to put some work into to win. We only have one prize (another face plate) so far, but more will be added as time goes on.

Well that’s not really true because Gears of War isn’t really going on tour, but in another massive marketing move by Microsoft we’ll see Gears of War sponsoring the major rock tour Gigantour 2. Gigantour 2 is the tour created by Megadeth frontman Dave Mustane and will of course feature Megadeth as the headling act and also Lamb of God is another confirmed act for the show. The show will run through 25 markets across the US and end around the middle of October.

To me this sounds like it’s also a great timeline for marketing for a game to be launched around the late October or Novemeber timeline. Additional details about how the game will be sponsoring the show isn’t available yet, but as details emerge we’ll be sure to let everyone know. I personally would love to see some costumed Cog and Locust running around the show grounds, or atleast some demo kiosks of a polished game demo.

No, don’t get your hopes up there is no announcement for a Gears of War movie… yet. But this will do for now. This summer Microsoft is putting out the big bucks and pulling a similar marketing move like they did with Halo 2. They will be showing Gears of War teaser trailers during the big summer movies rated R. That means there is a good chance that the trailer wont be censored in any way, and will be presented in glorius 5.1 surround sound!

Here is a list of current films slated to be getting some Gears of War trailer action:

• Miami Vice
• Pulse
• A Scanner Darkly
• Clerks 2
• Little Miss Sunshine

With A Scanner Darkly opening in limited release this weekend, there is a chance the trailer will be attached the film already. So if anyone catches that movie this weekend, be sure to let us know how the trailer looked. I may not be able to catch it until July 28th when it goes into wider release the same weekend as Clerks 2.

Hopefully Microsoft will also do a nationwide theatre preview tour of the game like they did with Halo 2. That was a great event for those of us who made it out. When is fragging on the big screen not a blast?

Thanks to Epic Games‘s President Mike Capps over at Epic Games Forums for letting us know and for binford04 in our forums for the headsup.

You looking to get the special edition E3 2006 Gears of War faceplate for your Xbox 360 without dropping hundreds of dollars on eBay? Well here’s your chance, because we at Gears of War Realm are giving one away!

So if you are interested you should sign up now! To sign up, follow these five easy steps.

1. Go over to the Realm Media Networks Forums
2. Register a new account in the forums; if you don’t have one already.
3. Once a day, put a single reply in this thread with something that excites you about the upcoming game Gears of War. Please try to be original, we’d like to see some good meaningful posts.

The contest will run for a week; until 11:59 PM on July 11th, 2006. Keep in mind that you can enter once per day during the week.

Now for the rules; posting multiple entries per day or creating multiple accounts will result in you being banned from this and all future contests. Also only one entry per household/computer/email account.

Also, the next iteration of the contest will be atleast a month long and will require some skill and creativity. We also hope that we’re able to throw in some extra bonuses as well to some of the winners. More on this contest in the coming months once we pound out the details.

I know a lot of you are patiently awaiting news on our Gears of War E3 2006 faceplate contest. Well it’s was delayed a month because I got really busy getting our new Realm Media Networks Forums up and running stable. The forums system is normally used as the registration point for any contest we run, but our web host has been having problems keeping the forums up and running properly. Now that most of those problems are behind us, I’m launching the first contest tomorrow!

The contest will run for a week; from 12:00 AM midnight Central Standard Time on July 4th, 2006 until 11:59 PM on July 11th, 2006. So if you want to get a hold of the limited edition faceplate from E3 2006, hop on over to our Realm Media Networks Forums, register a new account if you don’t have one already, and put a single reply in this thread with something that excites you about the upcoming game Gears of War. You can also enter once per day during the week. A word to the wise, multiple entries per day or creating multiple accounts will result in you being banned from this and all future contests.

Also, the next iteration of the contest will be atleast a month long and will require some skill and creativity. We also hope that we’re able to throw in some extra bonuses as well to some of the winners. More on this contest in the coming month.

I noticed a new article today over at Kotaku and FlickerGaming talking about a new feature being added to Gears of War multiplayer.

It appears they are adding some cool voice mapping features, so that your character appears to be speaking using your voice. It’ll even be able to tell if you are whispering or yelling, and animate the character’s face accordingly. This is a first of it’s kind feature, and I’m sure will add even deeper immersion to the multiplayer games than has been seen before.

I personally can’t wait to use this feature, as I am normally the one trying to organize my team sometimes I have to resort to yelling to get their attention. Having my character reflect that yelling in his facial expressions is going to help add to that realism. It does leave me to wonder how the little kids talking funny, using lame catch phrases or singing will look if their characters reflect that as well. Maybe the game will paint clown makeup on those kids’ characters? That’d be funny.