If you felt like we needed proof that Jeff Grubb’s comments about Gears of War: E-Day being made an Xbox exclusive were last-minute, we now have it.
In a hilarious cock-up, the official Xbox channel accidentally uploaded an episode of the Xbox Podcast. Why was it an accident? The podcast contains a clip of Gears of War: E-Day, which clearly lists PS5 as one of the platforms. Some clever people over at ResetEra captured proof before the episode was hastily taken down, and then probably burned to ashes before being stomped on repeatedly.
Well, they actually just made it private. But that’s less funny.
You might recall that just before the Xbox Showcase, Jeff Grubb proclaimed that he had learned Gears of War: E-Day wasn’t coming to PS5 anymore, and that the decision “That just happened. That’s a decision that just got made.”
Later on, he said that there was a pretty much finished PS5 version of the game just sitting on a drive somewhere.
However, Aaron Greenberg, VP of Games Marketing at XBOX, says that the decision was not made at the last second. Replying to journalist Tom Warren who shared the image of Gears of War: E-Day with a PS5 platform logo on social media, Greenberg said “I can confirm this is not true. We just limited the knowledge of this news to a very small internal group. Intention was to share this news first with our players and everyone watching showcase.”
When Warren asks what isn’t true, Greenberg replies: “It is not true that it was a last minute decision.”
Warren pressed him a littler more and asked when the decision was made, and Greenberg claims the call was made roughly a month ago.
“A lot has changed since Asha came into role 107 days ago. We are moving fast and it’s frankly pretty energizing inside the hallways here. I was made aware of these exclusives roughly a month in advance. Hope that helps!”
Unsurprisingly, this has started a bit of a war in the social media comments as people view the image taken from the delisted video as proof that the call was made in the days and perhaps hours leading up to the Showcase. Plus, there are rumours that Halo: Campaign Evolved was meant to be shown at Sony’s State of Play this past week but was pulled at the last minute.
WGB 