Gears of War settles down

The Gears of War franchise has been a success on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 system, but there have always been rumblings about it coming to Sony’s ecosystem in one from or another. Since the intellectual property was owned by Epic Games, there was always the possibility that the studio could make Gears games on the PlayStation 3 or 4 if they wanted. In June 2012 Epic’s then-president Mike Capps expressed interest in porting the trilogy to the PS3, but that never materialized.

There is bad news for people that hoped to see Marcus Fenix “roadie-run” onto the PlayStation. Microsoft has purchased the Gears of War franchise from Epic making the chances for a port infinitely less likely to happen. On Xbox Wire, Microsoft announced that not only did they buy the IP from the North Carolina-based studio, they also nabbed Rod Fergusson, the former Director of Production at Epic, and he will be joining Black Tusk Studios to work on future Gears productions.

“Epic Games has reached an agreement to sell the ‘Gears of War’ intellectual property rights to Microsoft. We’re very proud of the franchise we built in close partnership with Microsoft over the past decade and are happy that this agreement enables Microsoft to forge ahead with the ‘Gears’ universe on their industry-leading platforms as Epic concentrates its efforts on new projects,” said Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. “Epic remains totally dedicated to supporting Xbox One and is licensing the Unreal Engine 4 technology to Microsoft in support of their future projects.”

Black Tusk Studios is based in Vancouver, Canada.