Gears Of War: E-Day is getting a sequel and it won’t take as long says Xbox

Gears Of War’: E-Day only launched to the public a couple of days ago (Metro) Xbox still plans to cut more jobs in the coming months, but Gears Of War studio The Coalition may avoid the worst of it if the company can make good on its promise of an early sequel. It’s still too early to tell how successful Gears Of War: E-Day is, considering it only launched two days ago (although those who paid for early access have been playing since last week), but it’s also not clear exactly what expectations Microsoft has for it. The game’s reach is limited by it being an Xbox exclusive, since the console’s userbase remains so small, and although Gears Of War was once a flagship Xbox franchise, it’s not the same cultural juggernaut it was during the Xbox 360 days. While you must always take anything Xbox says with a gallon of salt, comments from Gears Of War developer The Coalition point to the franchise being key to Xbox’s future. So much so that a sequel to E-Day is already on the docket. This is according to The Coalition’s studio head Mike Crump, with the obvious assumption being that they will produce a series of prequel entries, since E-Day doesn’t end on a particularly final note – and is still set 14 years before the first game. In a BBC interview, Crump described E-Day as a ‘great foundation’ for future games while promising the next Gears ‘will not take nearly as long.’ Want GTA 6 news? Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for the latest GTA 6 news, reviews of new games you should play and exclusive analysis of the biggest stories of the week. As a reminder, E-Day is the first new Gears game since 2019’s Gears 5, not counting the 2020 tactics spin-off or last year’s enhanced re-release of the first game. Taken at face value, this means E-Day 2, or whatever it may be called, should take less than seven years, which is hopefully a promising sign for the fate of E-Day’s staff. Xbox is still in the process of laying off hundreds of employees, having cut a further 268 people just last month. More than 1,000 are still set to go by next July. Amongst those that have already been laid off are Gears Of War story director Juan Vaca, who was jettisoned just five days after E-Day went gold. What that implies about the future storyline of the series is unclear. It’s no wonder that staff at The Coalition expressed nervousness that they’ll face the chopping block once E-Day launched despite the studio’s status as a ‘flagship first party studio’ and, according to one employee, one of Xbox’s ‘good children.’ Aside from Vaca, the studio appears to have been untouched by Microsoft’s big reset, which suggests there hasn’t been any gross mismanagement or development troubles compared to the brouhahas Halo Studios has suffered. If Xbox seriously wants the next Gears game to have a short development cycle, though, it needs to retain as much staff at The Coalition as possible to retain institutional knowledge. Especially if E-Day is serving as the foundation for new games. Crump dodged the question when asked about the risks of layoffs and he also refrained from sharing Microsoft’s exact targets for E-Day though he indicated that sales numbers aren’t the only factor for measuring E-Day’s performance. ‘We measure things like, are we showcasing the platform? Are we pushing the hardware to its limits? Are we showcasing what the Xbox is capable of? Our goal basically is to be the best-looking game on the Xbox and really show the industry what’s possible with our hardware,’ said Crump, adding that driving up Game Pass subscriptions is important too. Even if The Coalition is kept safe from the worst of the Xbox cuts, that still means entire studios’ worth of people will be out of the work within the coming months. Microsoft has already divested itself of a handful of studios and merged others. Halo Studios is a shadow of its former self now that Activision has taken the Halo IP and Obsidian Entertainment is at risk of being completely absorbed into Bethesda. Will the next Gears game just be more prequel stuff? (Xbox Game Studios) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. Arrow MORE: Star Wars Zero Company team teases DLC as it rehires staff Arrow MORE: Games Inbox: When will the next mainline Zelda game be out? Arrow MORE: Rockstar wants physical intimacy ‘done right’ in GTA 6 as it confirms nude scene GameCentral Get the latest GTA 6 news, reviews of new games you should play and exclusive analysis of the biggest stories of the week.