Microsoft buys the Gears of War franchise

Microsoft has just bought the rights to all past and future Gears of War games, the acquisition also brings the return of Rod Fergusson, former Gears of War Producer and Director of Production who had previously left Epic Games after the third game in the series was released.

From now on Gears of War games will come from Microsoft Studios and will remain exclusive to Xbox consoles, Microsoft has entrusted Vancouver based developer, Black Tusk Studios with the franchise. The Studio's website currently lists two job openings, one for a Lead Writer and another for a Senior Online Engineer, Rod Fergusson will be playing a key leadership role in the team, in a statement to Polygon, Fergusson mentioned how excited he was to be returning to Microsoft and working on Gears of War again:

“I'm extremely excited to be joining Black Tusk Studios to oversee development on the Gears of War franchise. I've been privileged to work on a lot of great games with a lot of great teams, but Gears has had the most impact on me professionally and personally, so this really feels like a homecoming. I can't wait to share more with you all soon.”

Black Tusk Studios was previously working on a stealth-action game built in Unreal Engine, the untitled concept was first shown off during Microsoft's E3 press conference last year but Phil Spencer, Microsoft Studios Corporate Vice President, is now referring to that as a “concept piece designed to get the team's creative juices flowing”.

KitGuru Says: Gears of War was one of Microsoft's system selling exclusives for the Xbox 360 so it makes sense that they want to keep the franchise around for the Xbox One. However, I got pretty bored of it by the third game, hopefully Microsoft has some new franchises coming, the Xbox One can't live off of another generation of Halo's and Gears of War games. 

Sources: Polygon, Black Tusk Studios

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