Piracy not the reason for Gears 2’s Xbox 360 focus anymore?

Despite the fact that Gears of War 2 lead designer Cliff Bleszinski cited piracy as a big reason for focusing development of his game on the Xbox 360, Epic main man Mark Rein has decided to be a Contrary Mary and give a different analysis.

Here’s what Cliffy had to say on the issue:

Here’s the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know BitTorrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.

Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

Speaking to Ripten, Rein answered a question over young Clifford’s statements by not answering it at all, merely citing his own reason for the game’s 360 development:

The reason we decided not to develop Gears 2 for PC was so that we could focus our resources on making Gears 2 the best possible Xbox 360 game it could be rather than splitting them across multiple platforms like we did with the first one. I think Gears 2 will be a better game for it and that this was the right decision.

So what’s the story in Balamorey? Is it piracy or is it simply to make a better game? Could it be both? If so, why did Rein dodge the question? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admitting that you don’t want to put a game on a platform right away because it will be stolen to buggery. Well, it might upset PC gamers … but they have Peggle!