Cliff Bleszinkski, lead designer on the first three Gears of War games, said he believes the eventual sale of the series to Microsoft came as a result of developer Epic Games “not knowing what to do with the future of the franchise.”
Speaking with IGN and promoting his new memoir, Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games, Bleszinski said that once many of the core creators of Gears of War had left the company, Epic didn’t know where to take the series. Since the studio hadn’t shipped a game in a while and Fortnite had not yet been released, Epic needed a source of income.
“Epic had to keep the coffers full,” Bleszinski said. “They hadn’t shipped a game in a while. The [Unreal] engine was doing rather well, but they were growing and they probably needed the income even though they really didn’t know what to do with the future of the franchise.”
Bleszinski, who left Epic two years prior to the sale of the Gears of War IP to Microsoft, said he received one phone call following the transaction: from Xbox’s Phil Spencer, who Bleszinski called a “gentleman and a scholar.”
In an interview with Polygon from 2016, Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney said the sale of the Gears of War franchise largely came down to ballooning costs, with each entry in the series more expensive to make than the last. With such a large budget, Sweeney said each new entry would have to be a major success, as “anything less” could have tanked the studio.
As for where the series has gone under Microsoft’s stewardship, Bleszinski said Gears of War 4 and Gears 5, both developed by The Coalition, are “really, really good” but lack some of the heart of the original trilogy. He also believes The Coalition may have painted itself into a corner narratively, with players getting to make a major story decision at the end of Gears 5.
The Coalition is currently working on two projects, an unannounced title and a new Gears of War project, though whether or not it is Gears 6 has not yet been officially revealed. Both games are being built with Unreal Engine 5.
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