Microsoft acquires Gears of War IP

Big news is coming out of Microsoft today as they announced they have acquired the rights for Gears of War from Epic Games. The next "Gears of War experience" is in development at Black Tusk Studio in Vancouver and furthermore, Rod Fergusson, longtime producer on the Gears of War series at Epic has joined the studio.

Fergusson left Epic during the development of Gears of War: Judgment and went on to join Irrational Games for six months as they worked on finishing Bioshock Infinite. He was then tasked by Take Two to set up a San Francisco studio, in fact he's Twitter account still lists him as "Studio Head for a new 2K Games studio working on an unannounced project".

This is what Phil Spencer had to say about acquiring the franchise: "It all comes back to our commitment to Xbox fans. The "Gears of War" franchise has a very strong, passionate and valued fan base on Xbox. Over twenty-two million units have been sold across all "Gears of War" titles worldwide, grossing over $1B dollars (US). This franchise, and these fans, are part of the soul of Xbox. By acquiring this franchise, Microsoft Studios will continue to offer them more of their favorite games and entertainment experiences from the "Gears of War" universe."

Microsoft also supplied a comment from Epic Games:

"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."