Gears 2 can beat Resistance 2 - Kim
It did it the first time around, he says.
Microsoft's Shane Kim believes that Gears of War 2 will be the biggest game of the year and points to the first game's performance against Resistance: Fall of Man on PS3 as evidence of this.
"They launched with Resistance and we've sold nearly 5 million units of Gears of War 1. I think we won that battle," Kim told Eurogamer in an interview to be published soon.
"That's why I believe it's going to be the biggest title this holiday. Killzone's out of the holiday, despite some of the earlier statements that were made. We'll see what happens with Resistance 2, but we've gone head-to-head before. I still feel very confident in the quality [of Gears of War 2]," he explained.
Sony was not immediately available to confirm Resistance: Fall of Man's current sales figures, but it's worth bearing in mind that the PS3 first-person shooter was a launch title, whereas Gears of War was released on a system with an already-large installed base.
Kim, corporate vice president at Microsoft Game Studios, was speaking at Xbox 360's Spring Showcase event in San Francisco where Gears of War 2 was on display and lead designer Cliff Bleszinski demonstrated the second level of the game, called Assault, to journalists.
However, when we asked Kim where Gears of War 2 would sit on the scale of badass firmly established by Cliff Bleszinski and brand manager Kudo Tsunoda in Eurogamer's interview earlier today, he refused to be drawn, except to say, "We want a more badass sequel, right, whether that's 12 or 11 or ten. We just want it to be more..."
Check out the full Shane Kim interview later this week more on this and other Microsoft-related topics.