A prototype of Gears of War 3 for the PlayStation 3 has been made available online



Gears of War, a series known for its exclusivity to Xbox consoles, was once in development for a Sony system. A prototype build of Gears of War 3 for the PlayStation 3 has been uploaded by its owner to the internet, preserving the unreleased game. PixelButts, the one behind the "leak" described the beta as a demo build that Epic Games was working on in order to test how the engine ran on the PS3. The build was created exactly 10 years ago, in May 2011, but remained unusable and unplayable until last year. According to the Archive.org post, the game will not run on anything except specifically devkit PS3s, as they have extra RAM that helps the game to run. Currently, PS3 emulator RPCS3 does boot the game, but cannot get past the title screen. While the public release of the prototype is new, gameplay footage has previously been documented running on a devkit, and can been seen in the video linked above.

This is an archive of the original data built by Epic Games on May 19 2011 for Gears of War 3 for PS3 systems. Originally created during an engine test, and leaked 10 years ago and remained unusable data while circulating between collectors and exchanging hands. I was the first person to get this data working 9 years later, and decided now that it's time to release it on the 10th anniversary of this build being made (May 19 2021). To date, this is the only Epic-made data for a PS3 version of the game, as all others have been made with leaked source code.

 

spotanjo3

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Thats awesome.. A prototype? Neat. I understand that it is not running properly on PS3 but do you think it is going to be a fully playable or incomplete playable game?
 
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Kioku

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But I'd just love a console monopoly! Same attitude as people who want any non-Steam PC store in existence to wither away.

Mostly just EGS. I use Origin and sometimes UPlay if I want my Tom Clancy fix. GOG is a great platform and storefront.
 

Tom Bombadildo

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Thats awesome.. A prototype? Neat. I understand that it is not running properly on PS3 but do you think it is going to be a fully playable or incomplete playable game?
IIRC it's mostly playable, too, just has performance issues and two levels can't be finished (one of which is the final boss cuz of script errors or something :lol:).

But still, real nice to have beta stuff like this surface.

Beyond a couple levels having errors and performance issues, it's basically playable all the way through. I it'll probably never be playable on a normal PS3 since the RAM requirement isn't something you can just work around on a compiled build like this, but emulating it on PC should fix the performance issues at least. Not sure if there will be any way to fix the broken levels though.
 

godreborn

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@Codemastershock , I don't know the specifics exactly, but there are some articles on the ram issue between the ps3 and the 360. in fact, I remember an article on skyrim, why it has more performance issues on the ps3 than the 360, and the ram was the reason given. here's one article on it, but I don't think it's the one I read: https://kotaku.com/why-skyrim-didnt-play-nice-with-the-ps3-update-5885358

apparently, after skimming that article, a patch fixed most of the performance issues, but I don't have the game to know what issues the game really had. I think I played oblivion briefly on the 360 but not skyrim, and I don't remember much about it anyway. ;)
 

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This is so surreal, it's a shame that there's no way to run on a PS3 standard, it's pretty crazy to play something on the PS3 with the Xbox buttons and layout.
 

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@Codemastershock , I don't know the specifics exactly, but there are some articles on the ram issue between the ps3 and the 360. in fact, I remember an article on skyrim, why it has more performance issues on the ps3 than the 360, and the ram was the reason given. here's one article on it, but I don't think it's the one I read: https://kotaku.com/why-skyrim-didnt-play-nice-with-the-ps3-update-5885358

apparently, after skimming that article, a patch fixed most of the performance issues, but I don't have the game to know what issues the game really had. I think I played oblivion briefly on the 360 but not skyrim, and I don't remember much about it anyway. ;)
again, just confirms what I posted. The PS3 had fixed memory sizes so that it wasnt possible to just use less RAM on video caching to allow more for the game itself like 360 could.

Other console which used RAM for video caching is the N64. The Expansion Pak doesnt improve the hardware much, it just adds RAM memory to the console and nothing else. (many people since the release of it were clamoring for games with poor performance to use its capabilities, but unless the issue was lack of RAM memory, it wouldnt improve at all), the slot allowing expansion and the higher resolution support when you connect it are just consequences of the RAMBUS technology used at the time.

Skyrim was notorious for ballooning savefiles, it is just a consequence of the lack of garbage collection on the game and all of the minute useless details were being saved to the point of when it was necessary to load the persistent file (the savefile) into the temporary memory again (the RAM) it wouldnt fit.
 
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nikeymikey

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Well this is new. It'd be really nice if they decided to switch exclusivity to Sony consoles so Microsoft could stop making consoles permanently.

Why is it that any news post concerning either a Sony or Microsoft game/product/whatever, someone has to say something retarded like that in the first few comments. This whole fanboy thing is getting really boring now....
 

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Would be quite interesting experience for me to see it running on PS3 after all these years.

To be fair, GOG is really the only Steam competitor that does things different in a good way. Origin, UPlay, EGS, and most others I can think of are all just half-assed Steam clones with less than a tenth of the features. Without them I doubt the PC gaming industry would be much different, third-party key sites would still exist and all that.

Origin, Uplay and others are in totally different league than Steam. They focused to publish their own games on their own store. Only Epic, MS Store and partly GOG can considered to be Steam competitor but all lacks on some point to be a true competitor to Steam atm.

GOG with DRM-Free policy and no regional pricing would always put them behind Steam and would stay there to get leftovers from Steam and others. But I can say that Microsoft and Epic would be there in mid-long term as we already know MS is working on revamped MS Store and Epic steadily updates the store in phases as they also developing platform agnostic backend that no other storefront offers which is a big news for devs. Eventually almost every devs/publisher would prefer to use EOS to ship their games to any platform/storefront.
 

Xzi

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All my dead ps1's, ps2's, ps3's, and psp's would like to have a word with you.
I have no idea how you could manage to kill any of these, especially PSP. The one I have was given to me for free after going through like three other owners (likely children), it's totally beat and scratched to shit, but it still works perfectly fine. Seems almost as resilient as the OG Gameboy.
 
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godreborn

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yeah, the psp is quite resistant. I still have my original slim psp. I've never even changed the battery, and it still works 100%.
 
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codezer0

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I have no idea how you could manage to kill any of these, especially PSP. The one I have was given to me for free after going through like three other owners (likely children), it's totally beat and scratched to shit, but it still works perfectly fine. Seems almost as resilient as the OG Gameboy.
almost every single PSP I had arrived to me with a dead UMD drive, or one that died almost immediately after testing. My one PSP go eventually degraded in battery.

With the PS1/2/3, disc read errors are a goddamn plague. With the 3, its heatsink design left much to be desired, especially with the BC models, leading to YLOD's being inevitable.

With regards to Nintendo, parts sourcing is most of the time, quite easy. My only exception at the moment is that I have an N3DS (non-XL) with a damaged shell and I literally can't find a listing for a replacement anywhere. But if I was so banal and inclined, I could order enough parts from everywhere involved to assemble a Switch console from scratch, and then just need to source some JoyCons to attach to it.

With Microsoft, parts are sometimes trickier, but most of those I find are dead simple to fix. Heck, I have a made-in-2006 360 Elite that's been my main for all this time that still works, and I also managed to revive a same-era normal 360 with just a new drive belt.

With Sony, so many of them have the same faults, and it's always those parts that are impossible to find. And Sony is notorious about doing like phone makers and suing parts suppliers so that they can't sell them.
 
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godreborn

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I'll definitely agree about disc read errors. both phat ps1 and ps2 consoles I owned got it. I went to the slim model then. those lasted for quite a while. I ended up selling the ps one (think that's what they called the ps1 slim), then I kept my slim ps2. it lasted for about 13 years, which is pretty good for an optical drive. I have a second system now that's lasted about three years and continuing on, but I don't play it.
 
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Xzi

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I'll definitely agree about disc read errors. both phat ps1 and ps2 consoles I owned got it. I went to the slim model then. those lasted for quite a while.
I guess that's part of the reason I've been lucky, I've owned mostly slim revisions. The phat PS1 I've had for roughly twenty years is still going strong as of the last time I tested it, though. And I do have a BC PS3, no problems there, but I bought it toward the end of that generation so it admittedly didn't get a whole lot of use.

The only console I've ever had fail on me was an Xbox 360 (twice), and the only controller I've ever had drift on me was an XB1.
 
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godreborn

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I haven't had much of an issue finding microsoft parts, but I own a majora's mask 3ds, and the paint got chipped off around the screws on the back plate after having unscrewed it 100+ times. finding a replacement was a pita. I had to buy the entire housing for around $26. Nintendo sold or at least used to sell back platings for around $6, but not the special edition ones. I went to a questionable site called eeshop iirc, but it worked. I got a new back plate on my system. it was a pita to get the washers on to the screws though as they're tiny as hell.
 
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codezer0

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What about all those dead OG Xboxes, 360s, and Xbox Ones?
uhh?

granted, I've only ever bought "for parts" OG Xbox consoles, but most of those just needed a cleaning, or a new drive belt to work as intended again, in my experience. Also yeeting the clock capacitor, where applicable. Only time(s) I've killed one was either an accident or something I did.

I've yet to have a truly dead 360. Even my very original launch unit, while it had an RRoD, was entirely the fault of the hard drive it came with. But since I had the replacement plan from best buy at the time, they treated it as a total failure and just let me replace the whole console, for the Elite that I still have today.

As for Xbox Ones, I've only received a couple that were already "for parts". One was a "general motherboard fault" and the other, was because the kid it previously belonged to, somehow managed to yank the Hdmi plug off the board physically. On the upside, I managed to scavenge two working hard drives from both systems.
 

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