Rumor: The Coalition Moved Fully to Develop Gears 6 as Next Game - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 February 2023 / 2,648 Views
Reporter Jeff Grubb during today's Giant Bomb livestream stated developer The Coalition has cancelled two projects and is now fully focused on Gears 6.
"They have cancelled that smaller project, as well as another project, so there have been two games cancelled there," said Grubb via VideoGamesChronicle.
"This was all reflected in the layoffs that happened at Microsoft, which did hit The Coalition a little bit. The studio is now going to move on fully to Gears 6. I say now, it has likely moved on to Gears 6 in full over the course of the last year, but definitely, that will be their next game."
The Coalition has been the lead developer on the Gears of War franchise since 2015 when it released Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. The studio has also released Gears of War 4 in 2016 and Gears 5 in 2019. It most recently released the Unreal Engine 5 demo The Matrix Awakens in 2021.
The Gears of War franchise has sold over 41 million units worldwide as of August 2019.
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. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Since we don't know if the projects were good and there is a good fanbase for Gears if the team is ok doing it I see this as positive.
I dont know why you had a down vote for this but i fixed it by giving you an up vote.
Thank you, perhaps the downvote is for me saying that perhaps the 2 unkown project could be "bad" when I said we didn't know if they were good.
Don't get me wrong I'm always happy for devs to try new stuff, but if we don't know what those are it is harder to say if it was a material to get excited, could have been small project like pentiment that was a side project for Bethesda (that yes seemed to be well accepted by fanbase).
Yeah, pretty silly to down vote you for that reason imo, even more so when its only based on a rumor that they where even working on a small project and even more so when the same guy who started that rumor went on to say it was only a project to get them used to UE5 etc. MS seems hands off enough going by pentiment and grounded and hifi rush etc that im sure if the Coalition was working on a side project they wanted to and enjoyed they wouldnt stop them and force them to work on Gears.
I wasn't aware of what they were working before, so thanks for saying it. If what you said is really what was happening (meaning, the rumor was true) than even less harm done with they dropping those smaller projects. Now it is just expecting that the next gear using latest UE5 build will be a blast (in positive way).
Its time for Gears 6
Gear 6....
You know, Gears is a bit "burned", IP needs a rest, but...
People said the same about GoW, and SSM reinvented Kratos making the IP stronger than ever. It's possible for the Coalition, they can reinvent Gears and give It new life, It's Very hard, but possible, they are a great Studio.
considering the time between releases I think it is fine.
I Hope so... I like Gears OG trilogy, and i hope Coalition can reignite the IP.
That's the trick isn't it. You can revive it by changing how the entire game works mechanically. Change it entirely like BOTW and GoW did. At the same time is MS afraid of losing existing fans?
very hard to do so, good luck to them
I don't think there is widespread burnout on Gears of War. I think they can do at least one more game without major changes to the formula before that starts becoming an issue. It might be able to do two more over the next five or six years.
Gears 5 is great. The Coalition needs to finish the story they started. I want them to go all out with Gears 6 and include fan favorite modes and features. I want to see some more unique weapons. Finish the franchise off on a high before moving on to something new.
How about a Gears 1-4 collection? Like MCC was for Halo, we need that for Gears!
Suprised we haven't seen anything about Gears 6, not even a teaser as its been nearly 3.5 years. I'm guessing the earliest we could see it is in 2025.
Or perhaps they canned the other 2 (rumor) to accelerate gears 6 and MS just decided to not announce anything before it is near release.
Possibly, I hope they do something new with Gears. It's getting quite stale now.
aughhh. I'm a big gears fan and i think 5 has an excellent campaign. 4 was pretty lame but with a fairly surprising ending. I'm excited for 6 but it really sucks to hear that their other projects were canned.
So they have lost 4 years for nothing?
They did co-develop The Matrix Awakens as well as worked with Epic on UE5 development. The Coalition are probably the biggest experts on Unreal Engine besides Epic because they literally have developers that worked with Epic on upgrading the engine.
So supposedly they wanted the entire studio to master UE5 before fully diving into Gears 6. The rumored cancelled projects are thought to be tech demos meant for practice rather than actual games.
Those things are fine but it shouldn't take away from Gears 6 development especially with Xbox's history when it comes to it's first party pipeline instead of riding off the good will that came with Gears 5 you have this situation where they have been focused on other things, while I can see why they would work with Epic considering the History of the IP, there was nothing stopping them from laying the foundation by proceeding with Gears 6 and moving it over to UE5 when they felt it was ready, like I said I can see why they would want to be involved and why Epic would want it to showcase UE5 since it so tied to UE , but sometimes you need to face the reality of adhering to a timeframe.
I don't blame the coalition at all, thinking it over while writing this the word that comes to mind is regrettable since the downside is will my luck hold up and will I keep missing getting hit by a bus with my name on it before Gears 6 arrives or will my luck fail and
rather than a bus my epitaph will read run over by a van delivering his copy of Gears 6.
Most likely their acquisitions lead them to believe they now had enough IP to allow for gears to take more time, hopefully they get some aid from Epic in helping produce Gears 6 beyond the usual UE5 help.
I would consider that they were already on near full team for Gear 6, perhaps at most some things they were holding while waiting for UE5 to be available but that have been some years ago as well. From the report I would just say that let's say they moved from 80% of the team doing Gears 6 to 100% (numbers are asspool).
exactly, what have they done, no trailers even, 3.5 years later... crazy
I recently acquired the 360 Trilogy. Excited to try them. I don't know if I want to get Judgment as the dude looks like Simon Belmont from Captain N and the Game Master cartoon. For that reason alone I can't stop laughing when looking at it.
You can pass on Judgment. People Can Fly definitely did not get what made the original 360 trilogy so great.
A shame as Bulletstorm is awesome
That's a very odd thing to get downvoted for, to each is own I guess. Bulletstorm rules!
If they do, they don't know what they're talking about lol
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with Judgment, but there's nothing great about it either. I would say give it a try if you like the others but with it being 10 years old at this point, I wouldn't bother.
Just an FYI though, the same character is prominent in your squad in the 360 Trilogy so you won't be avoiding him.
Judgement is really just filler. Its a DLC expansion of a side story. Nothing bad, nothing great.
I feel like the Gears IP is much weaker than the Mass Effect and HALO IP, but they have the same gameplay and controls, even Unreal engine in common now. Would really like to see Microsoft give The Coalition a chance to make 2 games in each of those two universes. Using their Unreal engine knowhow. The Gears game might be good, but I can't get excited like with Halo and Mass Effect. 3rd person shooter experts.
Is... this is a troll.
No, look up the article "Gears 5 sales are bad – it is also the most successful launch in series history"
Gears is not a popular series compared to Mass Effect and Halo. How is it trolling? Mass Effect 2 was based on Gears combat. It copied it. Why not get the Gears team to make a Mass Effect game?
I'm not sure why you are confused. Every thing I said was simple and made sense. They already have the ability to make a Gears style (Mass Effect 2 style) game.
Look up Steam Charts. Mass Effect Legendary Edition has 10x the players of Gears 5. Same as Halo = Mass Effect = 10x Gears 5.
Gears 5 is an incredible technical achievement, but it isn't a game that most people wanted in comparison to Mass Effect and Halo.
Gears, Mass Effect, and Halo are all 3 entirely different games with different gameplay, nothing you said made sense, you even said Halo was a 3rd person shooter expert, but it's first person, nobody buys Gears of War thinking it's going to be a full blown high Sci Fi epic RPG, everything you said made no sense. Never have I ever seen someone compare Mass Effect and Gears of War, and like I said, Halo isn't even a third person shooter.
"Never have I seen someone compare Mass Effect and Gears of War"
that is laughable, same engine, same cover based gameplay
play Gears 5 and Mass Effect 2 and come back here
do a google search, play some games
also I like how I get downvoted for pointing out that Mass Effect and Halo both have 10x more players than Gears. Gears is a dead franchise. They are wasting The Coalition's talents.
Again, you are comparing incomparable games, that's why you are receiving 0 upvotes from anyone. Mass Effect trilogy is literally my favorite game of all time, the only comparable thing is cover based mechanics, and even that, Mass Effect is a way clunkier shooter than Gears.. I am done, everything you say makes no sense. I am still convinced you are a troll.
My name is Garrus. Mass Effect is my favorite title. The cover mechanics pioneered by Gears were copied by the Mass Effect developers, they even stated that out loud. You are the first person I've ever met that tried the deny the obvious.
How is it trolling. You think it is an insult to say Mass Effect 2 especially adopted the most popular 3rd person shooting mechanics of the 360 generation?
You seem confused. I guess you've not played Gears.
You might as well just compare every single game that has cover based shooting and is 3rd person. I mean, a shit ton of developers copied Gears shooting mechanics from that era? But, there are much more comparable games to Gears than Mass Effect? Like, two completely different genres, what is the entire point of you comparing Gears to Mass Effect? Like I said, nobody is going to buy Gears expecting a sci fi RPG. And yes, I have played Gears 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Judgement and Tactics also. Some Gears Pop when it was a thing too. ;)
They have the same gameplay? What?
Well at least they tried to make different "projects" and when that didn't work out they back on the bread and butter I suppose
This just isn't an accurate statement. Xbox hasn't killed any studio since like April 2016, when they closed 3 underperfoming studios (Lionhead, Press Play, and Team Dakota) during a period of financial hardship when they were trying to prevent a shutdown of the entire Xbox division in the wake of Xbox One flopping. So they haven't closed any studios in more than 6 years.
By comparison, Sony has closed 4 studios between April 2016 and now, Evolution, Guerilla Cambridge, Manchester Studio, and Japan Studio. Also since 2016, EA has closed 4, Bioware Montreal, EA Salt Lake, Industrial Toys, and Visceral Games.
well said (even Mass Effect, Industrial Toys and Visceral, sigh, these weren't even bad studios that EA closed unlike the Sony ones)
