Cliff Bleszinski Believes Epic Didn't Know What to Do With Gears of War Before Selling to Microsoft - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 November 2022 / 3,605 Views
Epic Games sold the rights to the Gears of War franchise to Microsoft in 2014, two years after lead designer Cliff Bleszinski left the company.
Bleszinski in a new interview with IGN has shared his thoughts on the deal and he believes that Epic Games didn't know what to do with the franchise once he and others on the Gears of War team left.
"I honestly think once Lee Perry [Gameplay Designer, Gears of War 2], myself, and Rod Ferguson [Producer, Gears of War] left, I believe that Epic didn't really know what to do with the franchise," 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 added that Phil Spencer was the only person to call him after the deal went down.
"As much as I loved Tim and Mark [Rein, VP of Epic Games] and we're still in touch, but when the IP was sold to Microsoft the only phone call I got was from Phil Spencer." he said. "Right? And that's Phil. Phil is, as they say, a gentleman and a scholar."
Microsoft after it acquired the rights to the Gears of War franchise handed over the development of it to first-party studios, The Coalition. The studio has since released Gears of War 4 and Gears 5.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I am so happy that Ms did know what to do with it as Gears 4+5 where great and i cant wait for 6.
Glad they continue to make Gears games. 5 is my favourite and the world building is incredible. Looking forward to 6
it was a tech demo to them
Does anyone remember in 2005 Sony promotional videos showing Gears of War? What a wild time
I'm sure Microsoft's offer had something to do with this.
I would love these games if you could toggle off the screen shake because from my understanding you still can’t. It’s so bad
There's a big tendency for all of this "this guy is a genius, no-one else can do what they do" these days. This is all BS, I'm sure there are 20 other people working at Epic who could successfully replace these people. This applies to all kinds of industries...
I love the Gears series. Even with Gears 4 and 5 not being as good as the original trilogy from a story point of view, I still played the crap out of those newer games. Even Gears Tactics was great. I think I put more time into Gears 5 than any in the original trilogy.
They were going to end it in gears 3 which some people think that’s how it should of ended but I love gears 5 and tactics is not too bad. At least I think the new gears team is doing better then 343 is with halo. Still like halo btw but infinite was a bit bad in terms of post support
I felt it should have ended after 3 as well. It's not that 4 & 5 are bad games it's just the formula has overstayed it's welcome IMO. I haven't played Tactics but I do like that they tried something different with the franchise.
I also liked Tactics, pretty enjoyable strategy game. I'll also agree with The Coalition's handling of the Gears IP vs 343's of Halo.
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