Along with the Halo franchise, long-time Xbox gamers likely think of the Gears of War sci-fi franchise as one of the biggest first-party series for the platform. After its original developer Epic Games sold off the Gears of War series to Microsoft many years ago, it"s been in the hands of the company"s development team The Coalition. The last mainline game in the series, Gears 5, was launched in 2019.
Today, in a new interview with Comicbook.com to promote his upcoming Image Comics comic book series Scrapper, former Epic Games member, and creator of the Gears of War series, Cliff Bleszinski, was asked if he would return to the game franchises via a comic book or some other way. He stated:
I believe Gears needs a little bit of a reboot, like God of War had, and I"ve always said, Phil Spencer has my number, I"m happy to consult. Gears will always be near and dear to my heart. Late afternoon, if I have a mimosa in me, sometimes I"ll go to YouTube and I"ll look up key cut scenes from the Gears franchise, like Dom"s death, or Dom having to put down his wife, and I read the comments.
Bleszinski also mentions in the same interview that he and his LawBreakers team at Boss Key was approached to offer a pitch for a game in the Alien movie franchise. However, those early plans got canceled after Disney bought 20th Century Fox, which owns the Alien IP.
Back in 2021, The Coalition revealed it was working on "multiple new projects". However, earlier this year it was reported that many of the development team"s members were laid off as part of Microsoft"s overall downsizing. The unconfirmed report claimed two non-Gears games were canceled as a result, and that The Coalition is now only working on the next Gears of War game, which currently just has the "Gears 6" title.