A new splash screen added to the official Gears Of War website seems to suggest that gears Of War 2 will be released on November 9, 2008.
If you look closely at the splash screen (available in the screens tab), you can easily figure out a bunch of numbers printed on the dog tags. Those numbers are 033-116-117-126-071. The numbers seems to be truly random, but by comparing them to a standard ascii table the following code is revealed: ESC-N-O-V-9.
So, "Escape on November 9th" it is. At least until we hear anything else from Epic.
July 8, 2008 - 9:00pm