Geoff Keighley, producer and host of the gaming event, tweeted about the surprise reveal of Gears of War: E-day at the end of the Xbox Games Showcase over the weekend." The amazing Gears of War piece is CG by Blur Studio and uses UE5 in-game assets," Keighley said. Now, you may read this tweet and think, as I did, that it is a harmless attempt to provide additional context to a cool trailer. That's because you and I are rational people. Unfortunately for Keeley, and perhaps for society in general, he has stepped on a landmine of console warfare.

As an exercise, I'll give you time to judge for yourself where Keely was "disrespecting the hard work of developers," as he was accused by the replies that began flooding in within hours. If you're confused: the trailer was labeled "in-engine footage" on the screen, because Keighley called it "CG."

One could argue that by calling the trailer "CG," Keighley is equating in-engine footage with a pre-rendered trailer and trying to minimize the technical capabilities of the coalition. This is because, as many replies might seem to suggest, "in-engine footage" does not necessarily mean "footage rendered in-game in real time."

The conversation was quickly derailed and more information was sorely needed: "Blur worked hand-in-hand with our team to develop the trailer using Unreal Engine 5," said Guy Welch, Xbox's marketing director. The trailer was developed using in-game models, textures, environments and props that players will see in the final game."

Welch stated that the E-Day trailer is a tribute to the original Gears of War trilogy trailer and was "created in the Unreal Engine using in-game assets." What he definitively failed to mention is that both the E-day trailer and the original Gears trailer were created in Unreal using game assets, but were pre-rendered. As a result, his response was so vague that it could be read as a rebuttal to Mr. Keighley, leading to a series of responses declaring Mr. Keighley "cooked."

Microsoft eventually issued an additional explanation, effectively interceding on Keighley's behalf; when contacted by GameSpot, a spokesperson for The Coalition said that although the E-day trailer was captured in Unreal Engine 5, "some captured in real time,"

as has been pointed out by some.

If Keighley's response to the tweet seemed strong, I agree. But then I have no dog in the console war. However, to the Xbox faithful, Keighley is apparently seen as a PlayStation sympathizer. In an age of multi-platform releases, the console wars will drag on as long as someone is convinced that they are fighting a console war. I disagree.