I don't think developing Gears of War has any relation to Frank stating he has multiple instances of commercial game and normal mapping experience. I've also purchased some of his resources, there all top quality, normalmaps are great, really nothing much more to say on that.

Viva Pinata looks to be a pretty cool game. I think the fur shader really helps it achieve that Pinata look, but can see where some of it might be overkill. I think Kameo had some overkill as well in this area, but it was released as a system seller, so naturally it had things like parallax mapping. I'd probably have picked both up if I owned an 360(waiting for Banjo Kazooie 3, then I buy one).