Gears cost MS a billion dollars

By Tom Bramwell Published 24 October, 2006

They just had to have the RAM.

Gears of War may have cost ten million dollars to develop, but Epic Games VP Mark Rein has been heard joking that it cost Microsoft around one billion.

Speaking at a community event in Canada, reported by TeamXbox, Rein is heard explaining that he and Tim Sweeney, Epic's technology guru, lobbied Microsoft incredibly hard to get 512MB of RAM included in Xbox 360 instead of just 256MB.

"So we argued and argued, and what Tim did is he actually sent a screenshot of what Gears of War would look like if we only had 256 megs of memory," Rein told a crowded Q&A session.

"So the day they made the decision, we were apparently the first developer they called; we were at Game Developers Conference, was it two years ago, and then I got a call from the chief financial officer of MGS and he said 'I just want you to know you cost me a billion dollars' and I said, 'we did a favour for a billion gamers'."

Then Xbox 360 came out and everyone lived happily ever after.

Gears of War is due out in Europe on 17th November.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (59) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tonynibbles #1 6 years ago

    Thats ridiculous!

  • morriss #2 6 years ago

    heh

  • Rusta #3 6 years ago

    Should have got the ram from ebay!

  • AcidSnake #4 6 years ago

    Apparently Blu-Ray was included in the PS3 because Kojima insisted on it...
    "It'll look cool...Trust me!"

  • lambtron #5 6 years ago

    lol

  • NOSAVIOUR #6 6 years ago

    Microsoft have got so much money that they seem to have completely forgot about making any profit on the xbox brand.

  • cyacomini #7 6 years ago

    I'd be really interested to see this screenshot, of GoW with 256mb - Just to see the difference....

  • Have_to_Speak_Up #8 6 years ago

    Hmm, back when i first bought 4MB of RAM to upgrade my computer it cost me £120 (if I remember rightly)

    So at that cost, a 2 gig machine would have £60,000 of RAM....

    ...

    ...

    I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

  • skillian #9 6 years ago

    Hehe, cool story.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #10 6 years ago

    There was a lot of lobbying to get that extra 256 meg into the Xbox 360. Some of it from within MS Game Studios themselves.

    Mark Rein is a bit keen of taking credit for himself. He'll be insisting Intel thank him for making them take over NVidia next...

  • Darkedge #11 6 years ago

    Typical Epic ego bullshit. Wasn't just them at all

  • Empedocles #12 6 years ago

    What a tit...................

  • DaveTHX #13 6 years ago

    After watching various in-game videos, perhaps they should have used that extra memory to provide better AI instead of making it look better.

  • Kostabi #14 6 years ago

    "Should have got the ram from ebay!"

    But then where would Epic get their game designs?

  • spongebob #15 6 years ago

    Well, at least everyone knows who to blame if Xbox 360 bombs.

  • Stormflood #16 6 years ago

    A billion gamers huh? Is this some kind of American billion that's actually a UK 10 million?

  • sharpfish #17 6 years ago

    I like Epic, I like my 360 and I am glad it has 512mb, Tim sweeny knows what he's talking about!

    However Mark R (as usual) comes over as a slightly less likeable version of David Brent (taking the credit and explaining how it did it for the good of everyone). Which isn't annoying just incredibly funny, I hope he did a look to camera, a hands moving together gesture and a subtle biting of the lip when he said it! :)

  • haowan #18 6 years ago

    Rein's a cock. IMO

  • snick #19 6 years ago

    As long as GoW is good he can spout off all he likes. You don't HAVE to listen to him.

  • chronom4n #20 6 years ago

    you can actually listen to this on major nelsons podcast Show #199 The one about Gears of war. check it out.

  • bauhaus #21 6 years ago

    Shit!! I hope there is some micro-content that we can micro-pay for to ensure the MS boys are not out of pocket

  • rinoaMW #22 6 years ago

    wow - i feel so honoured. they did it all for us? ^^

    /swoons

    /sarcasm off.

  • septimus #23 6 years ago

    Should have pushed to 1GB if that was the case. My phone has twice the memory of my 360... which just seems ridiculous considering the 360 has to last at least 4 years.

  • peterfll #24 6 years ago

    Reid is wrong, the 360 really needed a terabyte. So, you know, clearly his influence is limited.

    *stop press* Sony has said the Playstation 4 will have at least 4 terabytes of RAM.

  • Rambaldi #25 6 years ago

    "Microsoft have got so much money that they seem to have completely forgot about making any profit on the xbox brand"

    Short term loss for long term gain. Business 101.

  • gaijin #26 6 years ago

    *are* there a billion gamers?

  • Rambaldi #27 6 years ago

    "Should have pushed to 1GB if that was the case. My phone has twice the memory of my 360... which just seems ridiculous considering the 360 has to last at least 4 years"

    Working memory and storage memory are two different things old bean. RAM is volatile memory that is wiped when it's power is removed. It's fast memory designed to be a workshop, if you will, where the processor is the mechanic. Memory for storage is cheaper and slower and non-volatile i.e. it stores memory even when power is removed.

    I dare say techies will punch holes in that post but the basic point is that your comparison was a bit like saying: my banannas are bigger than your grapes therefore bannanas are the better fruit.

    /proimises to lay off the saki
    Edited by Rambaldi at 24/10/06 @ 13:05

  • Xerx3s #28 6 years ago

    Typical Epic ego bullshit. Wasn't just them at all

    No, but ms spin doctors can use it to say: Oh, look how great GoW looks because of this! Oh, btw, it's out next month, preorder now.

  • L0cky #29 6 years ago

    The difference with blue-ray is Kojima sent a screenshot and said "this is what MGS's fmv intro will look like on dvd".

    Luckily they didn't pander to the Americans and left the sad ending intact.

  • Rambaldi #30 6 years ago

    Marketing strategies are no the spawn of Satan y'know.

    /Locks Xerx3s XFiles collection away for his own good.

  • Rambaldi #31 6 years ago

    Ahh it all makes sense now! BR is a movie format and because some self-obsessed pseudo game maker want's to bore us with another long-winded and convoluted plot Sony bangs it into the PS3?

    And here's me thinking their motives were more complex than that ;)

    /gets on his knees and bows down to the glory of Sam Fisher

  • Xerx3s #32 6 years ago

    Marketing strategies are no the spawn of Satan y'know.

    T'is true I tell you! ;)

  • L0cky #33 6 years ago

    'And here's me thinking their motives were more complex than that ;)'

    Ah, you're just being cynical! ;P

  • ChromeMud #34 6 years ago

    What's even sadder is the fact PS3 has only 256 Mb
    to work with as the other 256 Mb is dedicated to the GPU.
    Well that's gotta hurt!

  • Hughes. #35 6 years ago

    Is this the same guy who said "Bullshit!" to Sony's "The Next Gen starts when we say it does"? Who's "proper" next gen game has been pushed back so it launches against PS3?

    Looks like Sony were right.

  • Xerx3s #36 6 years ago

    And wow, next gen consoles are really going to beat the pc with 512 mb ram! My 2 gig can't beat that for sure.

    ¬_¬

    I'm still waiting to see any evidence of this 'next gen' boasting...

  • mkreku #37 6 years ago

    ChromeMud: "What's even sadder is the fact PS3 has only 256 Mb
    to work with as the other 256 Mb is dedicated to the GPU.
    Well that's gotta hurt!    "

    Actually, you're kind of right. But it's the other way around. The Playstation 3 will probably be more hurt by only having 256MB GPU RAM, than it will be hurt by having 256 MB general RAM. The single biggest memory hog for this generation are textures. Those 1920x1080 games are going to eat through those 256MB RAM pretty fast..

    Of course, if you look at it that way, the Xbox 360 only has 10MB RAM for its GPU.. ;)

  • Darren #38 6 years ago

    I don't think 512MB of memory is enough for a next-gen console to be honest, 1 GB would have been better (but 2 billion dollars more expensive!!!) so I shudder to think what Xbox 360 games would have been like with 256 MB of RAM, particularly as developers can no longer rely on using the hard drive as a virtual page file. I'd imagine it would have had to have had standard definition graphics I think.

  • Darren #39 6 years ago

    By the way, nearly forgot, I heard that the extra 256 MB of memory in the 360 came at the cost of a hard drive as standard. Can't remember where I read it but it was uttered by a Microsoft bod or one of its close developers. Sounds a bit strange really when you consider that Sony have given the PS3 512 MB of RAM and a hard drive as standard.

  • SomaticSense #40 6 years ago

    The game can't be that good....... or can it?

    Seriously though. It may be different when actually playing it, but I've nothing in the single player gameplay videos to suggest this game is anywhere near as good as it is being hyped up to be. From what I've seen so far it's not even close to the fun level gameplay-wise as RB6: Vegas , let alone the "Defining 360 game". Looks fun, and will probably end up getting it anyway (after the aforementioned Vegas and also FEAR and CoD3) as it is the sort of action game I usually go for, but nowhere near the groundbreaking hit is being hyped as "The Best Thing Ever" and certainly doesn't look like it cost a billion dollars.........

  • mkreku #41 6 years ago

    For the record, I'm hyped about this game for one reason, and one reason only: it will be the first true showcase on the performance and abilities of Unreal Engine 3. Amazing stuff, that.

  • Xerx3s #42 6 years ago

    Of course, if you look at it that way, the Xbox 360 only has 10MB RAM for its GPU.. ;)

    That's a bit out of context isn't it?

    It has been a year or so since i looked at the diagram but iirc, that 10 mb eDRAM is for the really quick stuff and it can also tap into the 512 mb (UMA?).

    Oh well, if anyone is bothered enough to look it up...

  • SeesThroughAll #43 6 years ago

    I got a call from the chief financial officer of MGS and he said 'I just want you to know you cost me a billion dollars' and I said, 'we did a favour for a billion gamers'.

    Then Xbox 360 came out and everyone lived happily ever after.

    Is this news or paid advertising?

  • Xerx3s #44 6 years ago

    On the web, there is a thin line between advertorials, news & paid content. ;)

  • JP #45 6 years ago

    I never thought I'd applaud Mark Rein for anything, but thank god. Consoles are always gimped for RAM and it ends up making life so much more difficult for devs.

  • CitizenGeek #46 6 years ago

    Mark Rein is such an arrogant loser - "We did a favour for a billion gamers", hah! And did yuou do this in between your meaningless interviews on gamerTV and your complete thrasing of the Nintendo Wii?

  • stoopidgreg #47 6 years ago

    awesome

  • stoopidgreg #48 6 years ago

    "A billion gamers huh? Is this some kind of American billion that's actually a UK 10 million?"

    an american billion is actually 100 uk million

  • haowan #49 6 years ago

    1000 million you mean? as opposed to the traditional million million, which is no longer in use.

  • ChromeMud #50 6 years ago

    mkreku

    "Of course, if you look at it that way, the Xbox 360 only has 10MB RAM for its GPU.."

    That 10Mb RAM is frame buffer memory that is real FAST for storing display data
    and for doing AA and other graphical effects on the fly.
    Developers can allocate anything upto 512Mb RAM for CPU or GPU use.
    The 360 is a flexible playground compared to the one shot tube slide
    that is the PS3!



  • Xerx3s #51 6 years ago

    Mark Rein is such an arrogant loser - "We did a favour for a billion gamers", hah! And did yuou do this in between your meaningless interviews on gamerTV and your complete thrasing of the Nintendo Wii?

    A loser with some all-time classics on his name and soon a game that will prolly top 1 million in sales. It really sucks to be him.

  • peterfll #52 6 years ago

    Boys, boys, keep your RAM, GPUs and frame buffer memory in your pockets where it belongs and play nicely with the other children.

  • Nobuo #53 6 years ago

    "1000 million you mean? as opposed to the traditional million million, which is no longer in use."

    Here, a billion is a million million. In America, it's 100 million (kinda stupid IMO).

    But yeah, EG needs to clear up which they're talking about in this case.

  • gamesport #54 6 years ago

    @Nobuo, you are wrong, Haowan is correct

    In America, 100 Million = 100 Million.
    1000 Million = 1 Billion
    (its kinda stupid to claim otherwise IMO)

    I was under the impression that the 'million million = billion' is no longer in use in Britain, or anywhere else, and i think i'm right about that.

  • pjmaybe #55 6 years ago

    Christ, they're going to really sting us for the microcontent in that then :)

    Peej

  • NthSimulachum #56 6 years ago

    GOW Chainsaw - 5000 MS points.

    GOW Lumines track, with Cliffy B Singing - 10000 MS Points

    The short moment before realisation that fleecing has occured - Priceless

    Somethings aren't free, but fortunately XBLM takes Mastercard

  • yagisencho #57 6 years ago

    The million billion thing has me a bit confused. But here's the numbers for US:

    1 million = 1,000,000
    1 billion = 1,000,000,000

  • Feanor #58 6 years ago

    Any game inspired so much by RE 4 has the potential to be incredible. TWT.

  • #59 6 years ago

    @Darren
    " Sounds a bit strange really when you consider that Sony have given the PS3 512 MB of RAM and a hard drive as standard. "
    How much will the base unit PS3 cost again?
    ...
    Ah. Right. So what's your point?

    There really aren't a billion gamers that will benefit from 256MB extra RAM in the 360.