You're right, GOW dot com was the place to go to hear about whats happening.  I agree no follow through, and as we all know your grand slam will just drop past second base without follow through.  
  I think it would be cool if for every (if any) update they cook up they should do a timer like there used to be here before Gears was released.  You guys remember that?  It was awesome, I would be like "ONLY 2 MONTHS, 5 DAYS AND 17 HOURS LEFT!!!"
  But to me this is Gears of War Central.

Let's get it own!

Bungie has only been able to offer one thing for about 2 years now, that being their multitude of online content every week to keep the masses entertained in the interim.   It's the only reason that I check out their website every other day, to see if any other big news has dropped.  They focus heavily on their community and foster an environment which allows for the fervor to grow stronger.

The Halo 3 hype machine is largely community driven through updates like they do, not through huge press events and other more standard approaches.  

Software development is a fickle thing, let alone gaming development.  I can empathize with their desire to begin working on the next product, and how hard it can be to work towards that while supporting their existing product.  There is a balance to be achieved their, and perhaps Epic will reach their desired "Nirvana" resolving all issues that people have.

I am going to just put this out there:  I would rather have Epic continue to develop future content and update existing product versus work on their website and other standard online content.

Leader, Masters Few www.MastersFew.com

you guys nailed it. But this website is by far my favorite to get all my gears of war news.  

It's something that I've actually mentioned to my brother several times and was really the impetus behind me creating this site.  They need someone who is a community manager like Frank O'Connor because that's how you keep the excitement going between installments.  Bungie created a near perfect model in my opinion.  I love their weekly updates and the summaries of Humpday Challenges are great.

Of course, Epic has a much, much smaller team, but Mark Rein popping into the message board on occasion isn't good enough for me as a huge fan of this franchise.  I want more from them.  And where is the swag?  I want a Gears hoodie, etc.

You can't say that they didn't expect to sell as well as it has.  You'd be naive to think so.  I just think they need to embrace the fandom as soon as humanly possible.  And an official message board just doesn't cut it in this day and age of blogs and community managers.

Great post, Boris.

Porn is my porn. Gears is pretty awesome, though.

I don't know the history of Bungie back when there was just Halo CE, but I imagine that it was not as it is today.  Bungie and fans have had plenty of time to build their empire.  Gears I assume is spending more time trying to get out more content, game improvements than it is with other minor projects such as the ones you all have mentioned.  Including plans for a sequel.  We expect everything to be neatly tied up with a bow.  Red v Blue is a show that I love, but Bungie didn't create that.  The fans did.  One thing that may help is a more active participation by Cliffy and the other leaders at Gears (regular podcasts, news, humpday fragfest Gears team vs clans such as Gearheads, etc..).  Copying from Bungie on certain areas isn't such a bad thing.  Any other ideas?

"I do not tell lies, but I am a savage".

Bungie actually had a great community since they made Marathon and Myth. Both of those franchises, while they were fairly successful for their time, were by no means blockbusters. I think Bungie fostered a small, but strong, community BECAUSE it was a small company. Since the success of Halo, they've been able to maintain and improve upon their connections to the community, but it wasn't their success that gave them the impetus to do so.

I'm not saying that Epic shouldn't reach out to the community more, I'm just pointing out that this isn't something that suddenly becomes easy to do just because you made a multi-million-selling game. I think Gears was their first attempt at "creating" a community, and with CliffyB at the helm, they did a pretty good job. He was very open with the fans, whether through his MySpace, or his blog, or whatever. Now, they just have to keep the train rolling.

"The creatures were friendly and could see in four dimensions. They pitied the Earthlings for being able to see only three." -Slaughterhouse-5

I would rather have them work on the patch and DLC instead of the official site.

Also, EPIC does almost all their announcements and posts daily at the forum listed below.

http://www.gearsforums.epicgames.com

Eat A Peach

bungie folks are the masters of this craft and epic can defenitely learn this from them.