Gears of War 3 on PlayStation 3 was a test, Epic says

There has never been a Gears of War game on a PlayStation console, so the recent appearance of Gears of War 3 footage running on PlayStation 3 has understandably been a surprise.

Early footage of Epic's 2011 shooter running on PS3 developer hardware was posted to YouTube this month by a self-proclaimed former hacker PixelButts (thanks, Kotaku).

"As far as I know I'm also the only person with a working build of this particular data as well," PixelButts wrote in the notes under his YouTube upload today. "I don't know why it exists, I don't know why it was made. All I can do is speculate."

The majority of the game is playable, save for two levels which reliably bug out. Performance is decent, though the game appears to have trouble rendering character Anya's floaty hair.

Digging into the PS3 version's mysterious origins, Kotaku heard the build originated from developer Epic, and was obtained in a hack of the company's servers in 2011.

But why was it made by Epic in the first place? Was the Xbox console exclusive series once destined for PlayStation before Microsoft snapped up the franchise itself? In a word, no.

"This footage is a byproduct of Epic's internal Unreal Engine 3 testing process which utilised both Gears and Unreal Tournament," an Epic spokesperson told Kotaku, "and was never part of any actual product work for PlayStation 3."

Here's how it looks in action:

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