The official Gears Of War website has been launched. The site comes compelte with a news blog, media, forums, and more. No word on the demo though, which has been reported to be making an appearance on the marketplace in the next few days. That is unconfirmed at this point though.

Cliffy B from Epic games has posted a short message on the Epic Gears Of War official forums. The game, prevsiously thought to ship with 8 MP maps, will actually ship with 10. Great news! (Thanks, Dapunk)

Epic's Mark Rein estimates that Gears Of War has taken around 10 million USD to develop. Speaking at the London Games Summit, Rein slammed the claims that next-gen titles will take super-budgets to produce decent titles. GOW, he continued, "wasn't cheap but didn't cost the crazy figures you hear other companies quoting of $20, $30 million". If the game lives up to the hype, then his claims will be justified.

The outspoken Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, had quite a lot to say at the start of his London GDC talk. Most importanly: "Sony says the next generation starts when they say so - bullshit!" He then said Gears Of War on the Xbox360 is likely to look better than any PS3 launch title. Oh boy.

If you live in L.A., New York, Chicago or San Francisco, you can spend your wednesday seeing people run away from a guy with a chainsaw as well as using one yourself against those rather irritating locust hordes in Gears of War. New Line Cinema has teamed up with Microsoft for this promotion, and if you print out your e-ticket you can even see the movie for free.

Epic games has opened an office in Shanghai to help create assets for its own games, as well as well as for thrid-party developers. The office is made up of ex-Ubisoft employees who have worked on various Tom Clancy titles. Maybe we will see a UE3 powered Clancy game at some point.

The Computer & Video Games Mark Rein interview continues with part two, posted today. This part of the interview covers his thoughts on the Unreal Engine 3, the PC market, Windows Vista, the new "Games for Windows" label, and even the Nintendo Wii.

Epic's VP Mark Rein spoke to CVG about Unreal Tournament 2007 and Gears of War. Both games are coming along quite nicely, and both games are very highly anticipated by the gaming public. To hear some of the game's details re-hashed, check the link.

We have 6-pack of screens for you today. Two screens from Gears of War, two from Bioshock, and two from Bullet Witch, all on the XBox360. They all look fantastic, what else can we say. (Thanks, Optaviusx)

This morning Shacknews has posted an interview they conducted with Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski from Epic Games. Cliff is the lead designer for titles like Unreal Tournament and the upcoming Gears of War. Cliff pretty much touches on everything, the state of the industry, Gears Of War, and more.