Microsoft is having a terrible time keeping Gears of War: Ultimate Edition secret. First, a source close to the development team confirmed the game’s existence last month. And today, Polygon has gotten their hands on a number of leaked videos that showcase the game’s remastered graphics:
The videos, apparently captured with Xbox One’s DVR capabilities, were quickly removed from several sites that automatically pull Xbox One recordings from the cloud, but not before they were grabbed by viewers and reposted elsewhere.
The videos appear to show a Gears of War with improved lighting effects, textures and framerate [than] the Xbox 360 original.
Rather than sit back and repeat “No comment” until this whole thing blows over, Microsoft went to work banning all the testers responsible for the leak. Polygon is reporting that the testers, who are employed by an outside testing service, have had their Xbox Live accounts banned as well as all of their “Xbox One privileges” (and I do mean all, Microsoft has supposedly effectively made their Xbox One consoles “unusable” online):
Microsoft also permanently disabled their Xbox LIVE accounts (as well as other suspected accounts present on their Xbox One kits) and temporarily blocked all of their Xbox One privileges – meaning that for a period of time which Microsoft decides on depending on the severity of the offense, their Xbox One is entirely unusable.
I guess the moral of the story is… don’t break non-disclosure agreements. Of course, the more important takeaway from this tale is that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is real and its coming soon.
