Gears of War maker: There's life in the old Xbox 360 yet

The Xbox 360 still has a few tricks up its sleeve, according to Epic's Jim Brown, despite the old warhorse being led towards the glue factory as the fine young new Xbox 720 filly is being ushered into the stables.

With the gaming world eagerly awaiting the next Xbox and impatiently tapping their watches in lieu of a PS4 release date, you'd be forgiven for thinking that nobody cares about wringing the last few polygons of potential out of the 360.

But you'd be wrong, with Brown, the lead level designer for Epic - the company behind Gears of War - insisting to OXM that developers are still working out how to do more with a console sounding the final sad note of its swan-song.

Woah!

"When we first released Gears of War, the first one, people were like 'woah, they're pushing the Xbox to its limits, they're doing crazy things' - and every single time we've been able to step it up and find some corner of the 360 that no one was aware of and more areas for us to push," said Brown.

"[In Gears of War: Judgement] We're pushing way more enemies, way more particles, the environments are a lot more dense than on previous games.

"Our rendering engine, we've even added a few new features that allow us to do richer lighting, more dynamic lighting, darker darks, brighter brights.

"It's the most colourful Gears game ever, which feels weird to say. But I think it also has the richest darkest mood out of any Gears game since the first one.

"So yeah, it was all hands on deck optimising this thing, we squeezed a lot more out of it...there'll always be something more we can figure out, do better."