There's an interesting interview with Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney in this weeks 1UP Yours podcast where he says that Microsoft is trying to force Epic to not make the next batch of Gears of War maps free.
We already released two (maps) and we have four more maps that we've built. We've been wanting to give them but actually Microsoft has been pushing back on us. They're trying to build this business model around selling additonal content for games and that's a valid idea, but we would definitely like to release more stuff for free, and we haven't been able to do so yet.
As pointed out in this forum thread at EvilAvatar, both parties positions are understandable to some extent. but what's surprising is that it has become public.
