Gears of War 3 Release Accidentally Announced

The release date of the concluding installment of the epic saga Gears of War 3 was accidentally announced in Microsoft’s XBox Live morning of Friday, April 9.

The “spotlight” bar in XBox Live indicated that Gears of War 3 would be available one year from now in April 2011.

The story running around is that game designer Cliff Bleszinski was supposed to make a guest appearance in the late night show of Jimmy Fallon but was replaced in the last minute by singer Justin Bieber. Staff at XBox Live probably didn’t receive the message that Bleszinski was not able to make the announcement. He was rescheduled on Monday.

The designer, however, insisted via Twitter that he was not bumped from his slot and that it was his idea to change the schedule of his guest appearance.

“As much as I’d like to start a fight with @justinbieber the truth of the matter is that we wanted to take a couple more days to polish,” his message said.

The first two games in the series are almost exclusive to the XBox. There is a Windows PC version for the fist installment.