Cliff Bleszinski thinks Epic ran out of ideas for Gears of War before selling it to Xbox

Despite the franchise’s success, Bleszinski told IGN he thinks Epic had run out of ideas for where to take Gears next following the departure of several key staff.

“I honestly think once Lee Perry [Gameplay Designer, Gears of War 2], myself, and Rod Ferguson [Producer, Gears of War] left, I believe that Epic didn’t really know what to do with the franchise,” he said.

“They hadn’t shipped a game in a while. The [Unreal] engine was doing rather well, but they were growing and they probably needed the income even though they really didn’t know what to do with the future of the franchise.”

Since its acquisition of the franchise, Microsoft has released two mainline series entries in the form of 2016’s Gears of War 4 and 2019’s Gears 5, both of which were developed by transition to next-gen development using Unreal Engine 5, but that it wasn’t planning to announce any new games in the near future.