January 27, 2014 by Paul Curtin
Black Tusk Studios was revealed at E3 2013 as a new super-secret new Xbox One developer working for Microsoft. Nobody knew who they were or what they were working on, but many had guessed it could be a new Gears of War after the flashy teaser trailer Black Tusk released on the Unreal Engine.
Those who guess Gears would be correct because today it was announced that the Vancouver-based developer is in fact working on the next-gen Gears of War and could likely be working on something else, too.
But we all knew that a new Gears of War would be coming sooner or later. The big news today is that Microsoft has acquired the rights to Gears of War from Epic Games and has hired series producer Rod Fergusson to run things at Black Tusk.
What this means is that all previous and future installments of the franchise are now owned by Microsoft. So any hope Sony fans might have had for the franchise coming to the PlayStation 4 look slim to none as it’s officially Microsoft’s baby now. Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, has given the following 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,” Sweeney said. “Epic remains totally dedicated to supporting Xbox One and is licensing the Unreal Engine 4 technology to Microsoft in support of their future projects.”
This also means that Epic is no longer behind the development of the franchise. Good news for anybody who thinks the series has been starting to decline as Microsoft keeps milking it. Hopefully, now Epic can get back to making a next-gen Unreal Tournament like most of their fans want.
