According to the studio’s lead engineer Richard Baker, speaking to Digital Foundry in a Titanfall tech talk, the game wasn’t supposed to be on Xbox One at all, but if so, why was the Xbox 360 version outsourced to Bluepoint? And when was the decision made to keep the game exclusive to Xbox platforms, since a PS3 version was certainly under development?

“Originally we weren’t planning on an Xbox One version of the game,” baker said. “I’m certain that having an Xbox One version has made our PC version much better – it justified the effort in moving to DX11 and even 64-bit.”

A lot must of have gone on behind the scenes, but at least the product is finally out, and gamers are enjoying Titanfall.

But the real question here is, will Respawn  Entertainment’s game be the system-seller Microsoft so desperately needs it to be? Will gamers go out and buy a console for $500 plus other accessories to play one game, especially when said game is also available on Xbox 360 and PC?

In essence, can Titanfall save the Xbox One? Give me answers, folks. I’m curious to know what you think!

Titanfall Unlock Times

Xbox One: (Local Market Start Date / Time)

United States: 3/11/14 – 12:00 AM PDT
Canada: 3/11/14 – 12:00 AM PDT
Mexico: 3/11/14 – 12:00 AM PST
Brazil: 3/11/14 – 4:00 AM BRT
Austria: 3/13/14 – 12:00 AM CET
France: 3/13/14 – 12:00 AM CET
Germany: 3/13/14 – 12:00 AM CET
Ireland: 3/14/14 – 12:00 AM GMT
Italy: 3/13/14 – 12:00 AM CET
Spain: 3/13/14 – 12:00 AM CET
United Kingdom: 3/14/14 – 12:00 AM GMT
Australia: 3/13/14 – 12:00 AM AEDT
New Zealand: 3/14/14 – 12:00 AM NZDT

Origin PC: (Local Market Start Date / Time)

Central Asia (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand): 3/11 – 12:00 KST
North America (United States, Mexico, Canada, Brazil): 3/11 – 12:00 AM EST
Russia: 3/11 – 11:00 MSK
Australia: 3/12 – 13:00 UTC
Japan: 3/12 – 15:00 UTC
Europe (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland): 3/12 – 23:00 UTC
New Zealand: 3/13 – 12:00 UTC
India: 3/13 – 18:30 UTC
United Kingdom: 3/13 – 23:00 UTC
Ireland: 3/13 – 23:00 UTC
Portugal: 3/13 – 23:00 UTC

Via Respawn Entertainment.

What do you think, awesome or just okay? Let me know in the comments below.

According Respawn Entertainment lead artist Joel Emslie, the goal behind the controller was, “to create a controller that feels as if it is a piece of military spec hardware transported from the universe of Titanfall and into players hands.”

It will be available for $64.99 alongside the launch of the game on March 18th.

Just a while ago EA announced that Titanfall would be exclusive to Xbox One for the “life” of the “title”, sending gaming’s web up in flames as most thought the game was just a timed Xbox One exclusive. In fact, even Respawn Entertainment thought it was — as the studio’s head revealed via twitter, stating that they only got word of the extended MS/EA deal recently.

When asked by a fan all Titanfall games would be released exclusively on Xbox One, he said:

Zampella seemingly went on to confirm that a PS4 Titanfall game was not an impossibility:

Later, he made known that his studio wasn’t ‘in the know’ concerning the EA/MS deal:

Zampella didn’t hide anything, which speaks to the volume of the studio’s angst with the unfolding situation.

It seems like Respawn wanted to, or was actually working on a PS4 version of the game, but now that will never become a reality. PS4 fans will have to wait for the next Titanfall.

So the game was indeed headed to PS4, however things changed mid course.

A few months back I heard that the game would eventually come to PS4, but it seems like Microsoft has made the move to block the game from being released on any other next-gen platform aside from Xbox One. Good move.

The news was made known by EA CFO Blake Jorgensen in the company’s latest earnings call, where he emphasized that Titanfall “is exclusive only for the lifetime of the title on Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC.”

It’s a curious statement because it clearly states that the game will be available only for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC, yet the “only for the lifetime of the title” leaves wiggle room for future Titanfall games to be released on PS4. Either way, this is a big win for Microsoft, as Titanfall has been universally praised as a game that truly represents the next level in multiplayer gameplay.

The game will release in March, 2014, around the same time EA’s competition, Activision, releases Bungie’s Destiny. Some had speculated that Titanfall was being rushed out to market to launch in tandem with Destiny, however “No, we’re not doing that at all,” was COO Peter Moore response.

“Be the First to Fall into Titanfall! Check back tomorrow for a special announcement,” Respawn tweeted.

What could it be? Most likely it’ll be a beta, following in Destiny’s footsteps, as the two games battle for next-spring supremacy.

If you didn’t know, Bungie has been giving out beta codes for Destiny, it’s upcoming epic.

At Last week’s EB Expo in Australia, Respawn Entertainment community manager Abbie Heppe delivered 20 minutes of known Titanfall information to the crowed. There, gameplay, most of what we’ve seen already, was shown — but it’s still a good watch.

Quench it

When the man was asked if having exclusive games, though independent as a company, locked to a platform could hurt the Playstation 4, he replied saying:

“Not internally developed EA games. We’re changing nothing in our policy about being platform-agnostic. One of the things that struck me this week is how a tactical deal with one of our platform partners has been blown out and perceived as strategic tilt – that’s a messaging error on our part. There is no strategic tilt.

The Sony platform and the Xbox platform are both very important to us. If you look at the previous generation we did tactical deals with both Sony and Microsoft throughout the cycle. Titanfall is different, it’s an EA Partners game – everything else is platform agnostic.

Sony has been executing exceptionally well on the next-gen transition. Their hardware’s hot, they’re clear and disciplined and consistent with their policies, they are showing some amazing things with indies, so overall I couldn’t be more pleased with how they’re executing. I hope both systems are successful – EA succeeds when more platforms are doing well.”

He was then asked if this means Sony may get some Playstation 4-exclusive games from EA, to which Gibeau replied:

“It’s a long cycle, and certainly there’s potential with Sony exclusivity deals too.” He later stressed, “I can tell you now, our internal games, the games we make ourselves, will be multiplatform.”

What do you believe? Is EA favoring Microsoft, or are these deals just temporary?

Now, a person with knowledge of the situation has told Gamesthirst that Titanfall would indeed come to PS4 – that person wasn’t sure about a PS3 version of the game, however. According to the person, Microsoft “overpaid” EA to keep Titanfall exclusive to Xbox One “for a limited time”, but couldn’t hold back a PC version from being developed.

Not all within Respawn Entertainment was happy by the move though, the person said, but since EA’s the one basically bank rolling the start up studio, the decision was “out of their hands”.

Could this be the reason for Jason West, Respawn Entertainment’s co-founder departure? It’s not known for sure why he left, but rumor has it West retired because of family reasons. Yet it strikes me as weird that, after going through so much to get a brand new studio going, you up and leave almost immediately after. Maybe West was simply tired of being pushed back and forth by corporate giants? We may never know.

But the good news here is Titanfall will make its way onto PS4 sooner than we thought, according to the person. Apparently PS4′s current performance, with over 1 million consoles already preordered, has gotten to EA.

The most visible sign of this, is that when the game was shown at EA’s GamesCom press conference yesterday, no platforms were mentioned, only that it would be released next year.

Interesting.

When asked by Eurogamer if Titanfall will ever be released on PS4, Titanfall lead artist Joel Emslie said:

“It’s definitely not out of the question,” Emslie replied. “We have a huge appreciation for the fans. Coming out and showing it to everybody, we’re super nervous and wanted to make sure everybody loved it. We love all our fans, whatever console they support.

“So yeah. We want to make everybody happy, but this is where we’re at right now.”