Bringing out the big guns

Former Gears of War front man Cliff Bleszinski loves to court controversy – and the ex-Epic Games employee has been having a field day at E3. Writing on his Twitter account last week, the luminary took the opportunity to slam Sony’s used games policies, insinuating that the company’s not being sincere about its intentions for the PlayStation 4.

“The disc-based day one $60 model is crumbling,” he said at the start of a series of Tweets. “The visual fidelity and feature sets that we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assassin's Creed games are made by thousands of developers. You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing. The numbers do not work people.”

Sony announced during its press conference last week that you’ll be able to trade games freely on the PlayStation 4, and that you won’t ever need to be connected to the Internet. But Bleszinski added that he reckons that the company has “similar [restrictions to Microsoft] up its sleeve” and that it’s “just playing on the Internet outrage for free PR”.

He concluded: “You’re all being played!” Of course, if that turns out to be the case, the PlayStation maker will be held accountable to a far bigger backlash than Microsoft’s facing right now. Somehow we don’t think that that’s going to happen.

Despite the confrontational comments, Bleszinski was happy to let the platform holder clarify its policies over a nice meal. “Sony just bought us dinner,” he Tweeted a couple of days later. If you’re in the market for some free food, you know what you need to do.

[source twitter.com, via twitter.com, twitter.com, gamesindustry.biz, vg247.com]