Despite the seemingly negative comments that Cliff Bleszinski had about Metal Gear Solid 4's long cutscenes, the outspoken Gears of War 2 designer has given mad props to Hideo Kojima's squad, calling them "the best at what they do". More in the full article.

Welcome to the first edition of the PlayStation 3 Weekend Warrior by QJ.NET! We're recapping the biggest news that happened on the platform in the past seven days and we're dishing out reactions to some of the hottest issues. This week, we're taking a look back at yet another dominant week for Metal Gear Solid 4 and we'll revisit updates on Sony's game plan to turn losses to profits. We also have a reaction on CliffyB's statements on MGS4. Read on and enjoy!

Some intriguing comments have been dropped by Epic Games stalwart Cliff Bleszinski about Kojima Productions' Metal Gear Sold franchise. According to the Gears of War 2 dev, they won't be following the MGS storytelling strategy which he referred to as "on the way out." What's the full score? See it in the full article and tell us what you think.

Through an email sent to website Level Up, Tyler Bleszinski, older brother of Cliff Bleszinski from Gears of War fame, expressed his thoughts on the Wii's rapidly gaining popularity and its possible effect on hardcore gamers. Apparently, he's troubled by how Nintendo is reaching its hands to casual gamers and pushing the market towards that audience.

Being a gamer himself, Tyler grew up with Zelda and other titles generally aimed at guys. With the Wii reaching millions of non-gamers, he believes that publishers might also move in the same direction. In other words, casual games could overrun deeper games.

"The NPD sales figures since November have been troubling to me as a hardcore gamer who loves new IPs and in-depth experiences... There have been umpteen stories about the scrappy little Wii wooing non-gamers and bringing in hordes of new converts to worship at the altar of Mario," he said.

"I'm not saying that the videogame industry shouldn't strive to bring in as many new people as possible," he added. Tyler told a story about how he found an old woman at the store looking for Cooking Mama and Wii Play. "If these are the type of games that become blockbusters, then you can count on other gaming companies who cater to the more hardcore gamer to promptly change direction."

Tyler strongly believes that gamers who got into the scene because of the Wii and its casual games aren't likely to get into more hardcore titles. It's difficult to imagine that the woman at the store would be playing Metroid. He continues:

If Nintendo winds up outselling the 360 and the PS3 by a wide margin, how soon will it be before we gamers are using the Sixaxis to chop up onions with in Metal Gear Mama? How long before we're frantically swinging waggle remotes for tennis, bowling and golf in Halo Sports?

I sincerely believe that bringing new people to video games is a good thing. I like seeing the business continue to grow and be even more successful, because I'm old enough to remember the videogame industry crash between the Atari 5200 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. But ultimately, going more mainstream can have unintended consequences--ones that could negatively impact the breadth and depth of the kinds of games that I love, as do millions of others.

Unreal Engine.">Epic Games will be at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007, demonstrating their Unreal Engine 3 that powers Gears of War, the multiplatform Unreal Tournament 3, Mortal Kombat 8, and oh, a couple of Square-Enix games, too. This will be a closed-door event, though (some velvet ropes are not meant to be crossed).

For those who can get to GDC this year, here's the sked for the speaker sessions:

• Wednesday (March 7, 2007) 2:30pm - 3:30pm (Visual Arts) – Adapting Digital Cinematography Techniques for Game Development - Jerry O'Flaherty (Art Director)
• Thursday (March 8, 2007) 12:00pm - 1:00pm (Audio) – The Sound Design of Gears of War - Mike Larson (Audio Director), Jamey Scott (Sound Designer), Daniel Vogel (Programmer)
• Thursday (March 8, 2007) 12:00pm - 1:00pm (Business & Management) – PC Gaming in an Age of Connected Consoles - Michael Capps (President)
• Thursday (March 8, 2007) 5:30pm - 6:30pm (Game Design) – Designing Gears of War: Iteration Wins - Cliff Bleszinski (Lead Designer)

As you can see, Epic will also deliver talks you might be interested in listening to, because they're about Gears. Oh, and "online PC in an age of online consoles," probably one of the more debated topics in the UT3 community right now, which we'd love to hear just to settle the argument. Yeah, you'd want some seats there, too - maybe some sneak peeks at how UT3 will handle multiplayer. Or maybe not - the topic's under "Business and Management" - but the talk might offer some hints about what the people at Epic are thinking up.