14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most shocking pieces of gaming news of the past few months has been the announcement that developer Epic Games was selling the Gears of War franchise to Microsoft and would no longer be involved in its future.
Tim Sweeney, a leader of the company, says that the move was necessary because his team was no longer interested in creating new content linked to it, while Microsoft had an interest to keep the series alive in the long term.
Polygon quotes the executive as saying that, “It was one of those rare moments when both Epic and Microsoft were able to make a business decision that was obviously best for the community. Much better to have Microsoft building Gears games than for it to be sitting on the shelf unused by Epic.”
He says that his company was also listening to the community that was asking for more Gears of War experiences to be created and realized that they would not be able to deliver them in the coming years.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is willing to create new content for a series that has become associated with the Xbox line of hardware.
Sweeney adds, “The core Gears values are really tied to being big event-based, single-player console games with awesome cover mechanics and other things that really didn’t translate into the future approach we were taking with online games, and competitive and cooperative multiplayer.”
Former Gears of War Producer Rod Fergusson has been hired by Microsoft to lead a development team at Black Tusk that is working on the next installment in the franchise.
No information about it has been offered until now, but it’s probably safe to assume that the experience will only be launched on the Xbox One home console.
An announcement could arrive as soon as E3 2014, when Microsoft is set to have a set of big reveals.
Epic Games has recently launched its new Unreal Engine 4 tech to developers, using an entirely new business model that aims to make the development tools available to as many teams as possible, regardless of their size.
The first big titles powered by the technology are expected to arrive early during the spring of 2015.
At the same time, the company is working on its own Unreal Engine 43 title, called Fortnite, which is expected to be delivered on the PC and on next-gen consoles before the end of this year.