Microsoft's acquisition of the publishing rights to Gears of War means that Epic can "concentrates its efforts on new projects," in the words of the latter's founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. Among those projects, one presumes, is Fortnite, the little-seen Unreal Engine action game for PC. Let's hope that there's an Xbox One title on the way too.
"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 commented in a release, adding that "Epic remains totally dedicated to supporting Xbox One and is licensing the Unreal Engine 4 technology to Microsoft in support of their future projects."
The franchise isn't in entirely new hands - Epic's former director of production Rod Fergusson has joined Microsoft's Black Tusk team to oversee Gears of War's evolution on Xbox One. "I'm extremely excited to be joining Black Tusk Studios to oversee development on the Gears of War franchise," observed Fergusson in the same release.
"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."
Speaking to Polygon, Microsoft Studios headman Phil Spencer shed a little light on the change of hands. "We finished the last Gears talking about the next iteration of the franchise, one that Epic and I were going to talk about just as a natural course of the publishing and studio relationship," he said.
"They didn't have a firm plan for what they wanted to do with Gears, which obviously opened the door to conversation. They wanted to make sure the franchise landed somewhere we could develop it well, so we started having discussions about how we could continue the franchise."
Discussing Fergusson's involvement, Spencer also told GamesIndustry.biz that "it's kind of nice he can tie the franchise, the culture, bring it all together, and really help with the talent we already have up at Black Tusk to get the franchise going with a new organization."
http://www.totalxbox.com/70181/epic-to-focus-on-new-projects-is-totally-dedicated-to-xbox-one/
