The latest official statement from Epic:

“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.”

So, if this doesn't add fuel to the "Epic is getting out of making games" fire then I don't know what does, especially when they are losing game creators as time goes on and Fortnite still lingers in "will it even come out?" territory. Thoughts? Does this line up with your expectations for Epic becoming an engine house only or do you think this is Epic wanting to move on past being a "Gears of War studio"? This slightly bums me out as I think it would have been interesting to see the franchise go multiplatform, but I guess Microsoft wanted to solidify their "bro gamer" catalog and ensure that none of the franchise would wind up on the Playstation 4. .

Source:

http://news.xbox.com/2014/01/games-microsoft-studios-gears-of-war

I like to think that they are just moving past Gears of War

@pie: I don't know, when was the last time we have seen anything from them? The last Gears of War was developed by People Can Fly and it seems ages since Fortnite was announced (looked it up, it was announced in 2011!!!!). I think there may be some truth to them strictly developing Unreal Engine 4 and focusing on supporting it.

@iigrayfoxii: They probably do have a major focus on the engine at the moment what with the new generation and all that but I still expect fortnite to come out at some point. GOW3 came out in 2011, I don't think that's thatlong ago considering they are likely developing a new series that hopes to be as big as Gears and have spent a lot of time working on the new engine. I don't know

Well there you go

@pie: You make a good point it is all speculation at this point. The real question is do we want another Unreal Tournament. I DEMAND ANSWERS.

@iigrayfoxii: If Unreal Tournament is going to be as underwhelming as the last one then I don't want a new one. That game wasn't terrible but it was terribly boring and unimaginative.

You can only take these things at face value but I will believe they have tons of new games coming out when they are announced and at least have the semblance of being on track for release.

@sammo21: I agree. Seems like ages ago but remember when that game released as a PS3 exclusive? (it released on the 360 later). It was a PS3 game that supported keyboard and mouse AND had mods released for it. Wacky times.

i think epic does not have creative people with ideas to make cool games even if they have a good engine

Maybe they don't want a Bulletstorm accident ( where the game was good but it sold bad/fun )

Epic should hire phil fish and let the guy do some crazy game (just joking), also on a realistic note they could get the 2 doctors from bioware, they made worked on Mass Effect on the UE3 engine so they could do a interesting game on UE4

That's not gonna happen either, I'm afraid. Both doctors said they were done with games with little to no chance they'll be back.

There's a fire?

The amount they contributed to any of Bioware's franchises, especially after Kotor has never been clearly laid out to me. My impulse is lean toward less rather than more.

@veektarius: hmm , get Clint Hocking he just left valve or even better get Patrice Desilets or Waren Spector

Well this thread was a derp.

@deranged: outside of your incredibly thought provoking comment I am having trouble figuring out what your problem is exactly?

I pretty much think they just don't want to make more Gears. According to an Epic dev Patrick re-tweeted, they are working on a few games. Fortnite is just the only one to have been announced so far. I wouldn't be surprised to see a big announcement from them at E3 this year.

Also, some games just take a long time to develop. Jonathan Blow's The Witness was announced in 2009! Granted, Epic's not a tiny indie developer, but they can probably afford to do things at their own pace. If they are using their own new engine, as I'm sure they are, the engine's development probably added quite a lot of time to the dev cycle of whatever they are working on.

@sammo21: Apologies for sounding like a douche, not my intention. I just referred to the tweet from Wes Phillips stating that they do in fact have multiple projects underway.

@deranged: ah OK. Like I told someone else, I will believe it when I see it. They could have just held off doing anything until the new engine was up to snuff so they can debut tons of new games on the engine, but we will see.

@babychoochoo: Was it really both if them? I thought it was just one.

Wouldnt be surprised if Epic is leaving games, could be why Cliffy B left as he saw this sort of restructure coming.

Exactly...

Yeah, they were never really that intimate with the game making process and were more focused on the business side of things at that point and were probably just involved with making big decisions about their games as well as trying to manage people as well, just like when I think Greg was overseeing the Old Republic development in Austin.

@demoskinos: They might have changed their minds since then, but I think their original statements had one saying something like he achieved what he wanted to achieve in video games and he just wanted to move on to different things and the other saying he didn't have the same passion for the industry he once did and although he might come back, he's more than likely also done for good.

Hey, I feel you dude. They can say as much as they want for now and that's fine for them, but it's also completely fair to doubt that as they have nothing to back it up. I mean heck, they haven't talked nor shown anything about Fortnite since at least early 2012 to simply discuss which platform it is/was releasing on.

Getting rid of Gears of War now was probably a smart decision for them financially. I honestly don't see interest in that franchise growing in the future. It's more valuable to Microsoft as a console selling point than it is to Epic as a money-making franchise.

@spoonman671: yup they said infinity blade made more money for them that Gears of war ever did.

They need to put all their resources into the creation of Unreal III.