Cliff Bleszinski has recommended Epic Video games was uncertain what to do with the Gears of Warfare franchise earlier than agreeing to promote it to Microsoft.
Bleszinski served as lead designer on the primary three video games within the sequence throughout a 20-year spell at Epic that got here to an finish in 2012, a yr after Gear of Warfare 3’s launch and two years earlier than Microsoft acquired the IP.
In accordance with Xbox, Gears of Warfare had bought over 22 million items and grossed over $1 billion {dollars} when the deal was introduced in 2014.
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Regardless of the franchise’s success, Bleszinski instructed IGN he thinks Epic had run out of concepts for the place to take Gears subsequent following the departure of a number of key workers.
“I actually suppose as soon as Lee Perry [Gameplay Designer, Gears of War 2], myself, and Rod Ferguson [Producer, Gears of War] left, I imagine that Epic didn’t actually know what to do with the franchise,” he stated.
“They hadn’t shipped a recreation shortly. The [Unreal] engine was doing slightly nicely, however they have been rising they usually most likely wanted the revenue though they actually didn’t know what to do with the way forward for the franchise.”
Since its acquisition of the franchise, Microsoft has launched two mainline sequence entries within the type of 2016’s Gears of Warfare 4 and 2019’s Gears 5, each of which have been developed by The Coalition, in addition to Gears of Warfare: Final Version and the turn-based ways spin-off Gears Ways.
The Coalition stated in Might 2021 that it was getting ready to transition to next-gen growth utilizing Unreal Engine 5, however that it wasn’t planning to announce any new video games within the close to future.