Remember a few years ago, when Gears of War 4 developers The Coalition were still known as Black Tusk Studios? Microsoft teased a new franchise being developed at the studio. But it seems like that has been moved to the background (or perhaps, may be even cancelled?) for now, with the team at The Coalition focusing on moving the Gears franchise forward. Or so said Xbox marketing head Aaron Greenberg in a post-E3 interview with GamerTagRadio recently.
“It’s an incredibly talented team up there,” Greenberg said when he was asked about whether or not The Coalition was working on a new IP. “We pivoted that team to go focus on Gears, and brought Rod Ferguson in, co-creator of that franchise. [Gears 4 had an] incredible campaign, they did a great job with versus, great job with Horde mode. So that team is focused on the Gears franchise going forward.”
Greenberg then moved on to address something that many people felt was an issue with Microsoft’s E3 press event, in that it had very few AAA game reveals and announcements to speak of. “We felt like we showed a lot of great AAA games,” he said. “It’s tough, because if you show too many AAA games, people are gonna be like ‘oh man, all you’re showing us are big blockbusters, we want to see more variety and diversity’. We just showed everything. But with that said, largely what we showed was games that are going to launch between now and E3 next year.”
He then went on to talk about Microsoft’s strength in first party, listing out several games that Microsoft showed off at this year’s E3. “Take our first party stuff,” Greenberg said. “Forza will be out, Crackdown will be out, Sea of Thieves, Super Lucky’s Tale, State of Decay 2, all will be launching before E3 next year. So we showed you big blockbuster exclusives that you will be able to play over the next year, in addition to Assassin’s Creed this holiday, in addition to a great variety of all those great indie titles that are coming out- like Cupheads. And that’s an exclusive.”
“So that was the idea,” he continued. “Let’s go long, let’s break the rules. We used to always be ninety minutes because because of TV, and we had to cut off because people were setting their DVRs, but now the TV audience is just a fraction of our total audience, with streaming and all the people who are watching on their consoles.”
To be fair, Microsoft did talk about a number of major AAA releases at E3 this year, including both first party and third party. While it’s true that there weren’t a lot of surprises at their conference, and that there were indeed a large number of indie titles that were shown off, that doesn’t take away from the AAA games they showed either. What’s your take on this? Tell us in the comments section below.