I don´t really get the sentence "it was all downhill from there". In what way was everything downhill? Am I missing something?

Teeqoz said: After reading the whole article I still am unsure as to wether or not they were forced to make Gears for all time I get that they wanted to tackle one Gears entry, but to just make Gears? It'll become kinda... repetetive after awhile, surely? I mean, even Bungie got tired of making Halo.

still kinda seems like bullshit to me. they were making their new IP, which was supposed to be "the next big franchise like halo" for MS. it was, in a way, already teased, why drop that to start a new project, and why commit them selfs to be the "gears of war studio"? this seems nothing like PR to me. 

That's what confuses me, it seems like they didn't like Rod Fergusson?

My guess: They all wanted to take a crack at Gears as a one off exercise, but then MS brought in Ferguson and told them "Since you wanted it, now you are becoming a Gears only studio". 

It was a joke.

Yeah some people make it seem as if big bad MS forced them to move to Gears, but they actually had a choice and picked Gears.

Wonder who would be making Gears if they said no thanks.

I saw it as they were all excited to meet Rod and just took stewardship of a massive IP, then he made them get down to work.

Investment. Microsoft had been nurturing the franchise since before Halo 2 came out and it was called Unreal Warfare. They commisioned books like they did Halo. Sought for a movie. Merchandising. They bought the IP for an estimated (rumored) $100M, which is less than 1/10 of what the franchise is worth.

This is about getting it to a be a $3Billion franchise.

No matter what game BT ended up working on, Gears 4 was getting made by an internal studio. Whether it was another existing one or MS would have to build one, there's no way they were going to let the last 7 years go to waste.

They wanted to make a games in a killer IP, why not skip to the end? Some are born for greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them. There's no shame in it and it was their choice. I doubt MS would stop them from making a new IP if the drive were there and they had something promising. MS invests in new IP outside their walls quite significantly, why any less internally? But it would never be at the expense of Gears. Not unless it was beyond saving, and we're at least 5 mainline games and 15 years away from that.

If they get to the point of being 2 teams, they'd just give them a different name.

One consoles PR is another consoles "Allowed to branch out"

They're leaving an important part out regarding that round table discussion.

When Microsoft offered Gears, they also said, "oh, and you'll be making a hell of a lot more money."