Microsoft has heralded the end of an era by announcing that it has bought the Gears of War franchise from Epic Games, and that the development duties of these games have been handed over to Black Tusk Studios. Among all this, there’s no news about when a new GoW game will be ready to be released, but wild rumors about the franchise’s leap onto PlayStation platforms have finally been put to rest.
Since Gears of War is in the possession of Microsoft now, its exclusivity to Xbox consoles has been made permanent. Prior to this, Epic Games was working under a deal with the Redmond-based company to release GoW titles only on Xbox platforms. Following this shift in possession of the rights, Microsoft has also called upon Gears of War series director from Epic, Rod Ferguson to join the Black Tusk Studios, and assist it in the process of developing new Gears of War games.
As for Black Tusk Studios, it is a fairly new outfit which was earlier tasked with creating a major new Xbox franchise, a glimpse of which was also shown by it at E3 2013. It is hence not sure whether that project will be kept on the backburner for the new Gears of War game or whether both will be developed simultaneously.
The first Gears of War title had come out in 2006, and had managed to establish new standards for the third person shooter genre. It received a sequel in 2008, whereas the trilogy was completed in 2011. Last year also saw the release of a fourth installment which acted as a prequel to the series.