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Microsoft's Phil Spencer Talks About Gears Of War's Future
The Gears of War series wrapped up on Xbox 360 earlier this year with the release of Gears of War: Judgment. We may not have seen the last of Epic's franchise, but Microsoft Game Studios VP Phil Spencer says there would be changes to future installments if he had his way.
Spencer spoke about the series during an extended interview on IGN's Podcast Unlocked show. When asked about the possibility of Gears coming to the Xbox One, he seemed more interested in ensuring that a new entry would be up to the level of the first few titles. "I want to find a great Gears game. I thought we did a good job with Judgment, but I don't think it hit the level of quality that we saw in the previous games," Spencer said. "I think review scores showed that, sales showed that. And I really think that we'd need to take a step back with Epic and think about ... I won't call it a reboot, because it's kind of an overused term, but think about where that franchise goes and how to expand what it was.
"I'd love to have that conversation, I do talk to the Epic guys often," Spencer continued. "They're also busy right now, I think they've said that Gears is kind of on the back burner for them. So I think it would be a situation when the opportunity came up at the right time it would be great to sit down with them. They're, again, the right team to work on that game – trying to find another team to do that game I think is possible, but you'd want to make sure you did that very carefully along with them to make sure we had the right thing in place. I think that franchise would need ... not be reworked, but you'd need to think about how to expand the universe and what people are doing. Maybe take it more gritty. I don't know. You'd want to do something with it, because I think it did run its course on 360 – and it was a great success on 360 – but it doesn't quite have the story arc of a thing like Halo or something, at least the way it's played out in the games, and I think we'd want to pump that up."
You can listen to the entirety of Spencer's comments on the podcast. His hour-long portion starts at around the 38:00 mark, with his Gears comments coming at approximately 1:21:00.
[Source: IGN, via Destructoid]
Our Take
Publishers often take their lumps for churning out sequel after uninspired sequel – and for good reason. When you're spending $60, you don't want to feel ripped off. It could have been easy for Microsoft to squeeze out a few more Gears games, but it looks as though they value the franchise enough to accept some of the feedback that Judgment generated. If it means a better game if the series comes back, that's nothing but positive news.
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