Despite recent reports indicating that version of the Gears of War: E-Day trailer sporting the PS5 logo led to one of Xbox’s official podcast videos being taken down, creative director Matt Searcy has reiterated that there was never any plan to release the title on Sony’s platform. Speaking to Eurogamer, Searcy and brand director Nicole Fawcette said that there were never any discussions about bringing Gears of War: E-Day to PS5, and as such, no plans were made that got changed.
“Well, we never talked about it going to PS5,” said Searcy. Fawcette went on to add that “It was never changed.” Further in the conversation, Searcy spoke about how Gears of War: E-Day makes sense as an Xbox-exclusive release. “I would say that, Gears as an exclusive, makes a tonne of sense,” he said. “It’s kind of an honour, and exciting, to be one of the Xbox flagship titles.”
However, with console exclusivity also comes a much smaller audience, especially since Xbox consoles are fairly behind the PS5 when it comes to user base. When asked about this, Searcy, along with art director Aryan Hanbeck, said that they weren’t too concerned about shipping the game to a smaller audience.
“Of course, it’s awesome to have [more] people play our games, but for Xbox and PC, you’ve got what is out there,” said Searcy. “We’re not too concerned about the size of the audience,” Hanbeck added. “We’ve shipped to audiences smaller before, and there are great shooters on Xbox already.”
Gears of War: E-Day is being developed for PC and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release on October 6th. The title got an extensive showcase last weekend through dedicated Direct video hosted by Xbox. This was also when the company confirmed that Gears of War: E-Day, along with Clockwork Revolution, would not be coming to PS5. In a further statement, Xbox said that the exclusivity isn’t time-limited either.
“As part of our focus on the return of Xbox, we also announced that Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will be Xbox console exclusives,” said the company in a statement. “These are not timed exclusives. Games already announced for multiplatform releases will stick to that plan – we’re committed to investing in and growing Xbox both on console and beyond.”
Searcy, Hanbeck and technical director Kate Rayner had recently also spoken about how Gears of War: E-Day was The Coalition’s first entry in the franchise since 2015 that reused zero assets from previous games during development. To do this, the three spoke about how useful Unreal Engine 5 was throughout the process.
“We took advantage of UE5 to bring Gears up to speed with where modern gaming is, without losing what makes it authentic,” Searcy said. “You’re playing a sweaty Gears game — but it’s entirely built from scratch to capture the emotional core of those older games.”
Hanbeck also spoke about leaning on the horror-adjacent elements that the Gears franchise was known for in its earlier entries. “We wanted to lean into the horror-adjacent elements Gears always had,” he said. “Light and dark, getting into scarier spaces, dynamic shadows. This tech lets us do that in a way we couldn’t before. You really don’t want to tell that story if you can’t deliver on the visual gravitas of what has to go with it. It deserves a certain amount of weight.”