Shack: Many feel the gaming industry is stagnating. Concepts being regurgitated endlessly, sequels being churned out at Tomb Raider-esque speeds, et cetera. What are your thoughts on the current state of the industry? Do you see things as picking up, or is some real innovation needed?

CliffyB: I think things are stagnating a bit because it's hard enough to do what's been done before and even do it right. Games that make you play for an extended period of time without auto-checkpointing. Unintuitive controls. Horrible dialogue and voice acting. Crappy cameras. The list goes on. Making a videogame is such a difficult process that quite frankly I'm surprised any ever actually get done and that some of them are fun.

Now, I'm not saying Gears is going to be a perfect game - how much people like it remains to be seen. What I do know is that we as an industry have to perfect what we've got before we continue to try to completely reinvent it.