The Gears of War franchise is currently enjoying life as one of the most successful Microsoft exclusives in its considerable library, especially following the record-breaking debut of 2019’s Gears 5. Following six main entries on Xbox and Windows, the series is so associated with the Microsoft brand that it’d be truly strange to see an entry appear on any other platform. However, it seems the impossible indeed happened this past week when leaked footage depicted 2011’s Gears of War 3 running on the PlayStation 3 – a competing console to the game’s native Xbox 360.

Footage of this apparent port surfaced online a few days ago by a professed former hacker named PixelButts. Detailed by Kotaku, the port is indeed the real deal and was retrieved from an infamous data breach that took place back in 2011. Series’ then-developer Epic Games was notably included in the hack, leaving various unfinished versions of the yet-unreleased Gears of War 3 open for the taking. By the looks of the recent footage, this included a build of GOW3 running on PS3. Very rough around the edges, the video shows over eight hours of gameplay from the unreleased port, suggesting a fair amount of work was dedicated to making it run on Sony hardware.

While it was deemed a mystery how such a port came into existence, Epic has now explained why Gears of War 3 was ever made to work for the PS3 in a statement released to Kotaku. Essentially, the company revealed that this unfinished build was only supposed to be a test of the company’s proprietary Unreal Engine 3 and therefore, never meant to viewed by public eyes. “This footage is a byproduct of Epic’s internal Unreal Engine 3 testing process, which utilized both Gears and Unreal Tournament, and was never part of any actual product work for PlayStation 3,” the statement read.

This explanation from Epic makes plenty of sense, especially as Unreal Engine 3 was created with porting across multiple platforms in mind – including the PlayStation 3. With Epic’s Gears series winding down around 2011, it isn’t too strange to assume the developer would be testing the engine’s capabilities with a game as impressively assembled as Gears of War 3. Following the release of 2013’s Gears of War: Judgement, the franchise would be officially acquired by Microsoft in 2014, likely putting to bed any future Gears development on the PlayStation platform. Mobile devices on the other hand…

Gears of War 3 is available now on Xbox 360 and Xbox One via Backward Compatibility.

What do you think? Do you curious about the possibilities of Gears of War 3 on PS3, or will you not hear anything more of this blasphemy? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter and Facebook to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more headlines recently featured on DFTG, check out these next few news stories:

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