Local Game Sells Epic Numbers

"Gears of War," the Xbox 360 exclusive shooter developed here in Cary, NC by Epic Games, has sold 2 million copies in its first two weeks. It's the fastest-selling next generation game this year. (EA's "Madden NFL 07" sold over 2 million copies in its first week across platforms.) The game also nudged aside "Halo 2" to become the most popular online game on Xbox Live. And people are also buying Xbox 360s to play the game or jumping online for the first time because of it, as Xbox Live Gold membership purchases are up 50 percent since the game launched.

Gamers are fickly customers and they only buy quality titles, especially this time of year when there are so many games flooding store shelves. "Gears of War" has been named the best next gen game by 45 game outlets around the world and has rated a 95 percent average score at GameRankings.com, which aggregregates game reviews from print and online game outlets.

There's good news for gamers who have played through to the first game's ending. According to a recent interview with Jeff Bell, Microsoft's corporate vice president of global marketing for Interactive Entertainment Business, "Gears of War" is the first of a trilogy of games. Anyone who's played through the first game's single-player story knows that a second one was coming, but this means that "Gears" will get the "Halo" treatment from Microsoft.

When the dust settles at the end of this year, two local game makers, Epic and Red Storm Entertainment, which made "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter," will be responsible for two of the best-selling games in the world in 2006.