Big announcement from Microsoft Studios this morning, who has revealed that it has acquired Gears of War. Epic Games has sold the entire franchise to the home of Xbox in a deal that includes all existing and future games, entertainment experiences and merchandise. This is absolutely huge for Microsoft and guarantees that Gears will be exclusive to the Xbox One.
Epic Games will no longer work on the franchise, of course, with Black Tusk Studios of Vancouver B.C. taking over duties as developer. They're a new studio who reportedly working on a top secret project that would be Microsoft's latest major franchise, on the level of Halo. This would be their second major game project they're working on, a surprise for an untested studio. Gears of War fans can take solace that the former director of production of the series, Rod Ferguson, will join Microsoft and "play a key studio leadership role at Black Tusk".
"The news that Rod Fergusson is joining Black Tusk should be really exciting for fans of the franchise," says Hanno Lemke, General Manager of Black Tusk Studios at Microsoft Studios. "Rod has played a leadership role at Epic on all of the 'Gears of Wars' games, he understands the franchise deeply but equally importantly he understands the fans of the franchise - what they love, where they want to see the franchise evolve. Once the news spreads about the opportunities at Black Tusk, I'm confident we'll see interest from a number of talented developers who share the same passion for the 'Gears' franchise as the developers at Black Tusk."
There's no news on a new game just yet but if you don't think this means they're working on an Xbox One installment of the series right now, well, you're just silly. That game will be the biggest release on the system by far, an instant best-seller. The Gears of War franchise has grossed over $1 Billion worldwide and is one of the most closely associated with the Xbox brand, so for Microsoft to grab this before it got away was incredibly smart of them. Exclusives like this are going to be critical for the success of the next-gen systems.
"Epic Games has reached an agreement to sell the 'Gears of War' intellectual property rights to Microsoft," Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said in a statement. "We're very proud of the franchise we built in close partnership with Microsoft over the past decade and are happy that this agreement enables Microsoft to forge ahead with the 'Gears' universe on their industry-leading platforms as Epic concentrates its efforts on new projects. "Epic remains totally dedicated to supporting Xbox One and is licensing the Unreal Engine 4 technology to Microsoft in support of their future projects."
