Cliffy B Comments on Gears of War Sale

Cliffy B was the face of Gears of War for a long time, and though he hasn’t been involved with it for a few years, he was still first in line for comment when it was sold.

Waking up today I was drowning in a deluge of emails, tweets, direct messages and smoke signals.

My former employer has sold the Gears of War IP/franchise to Microsoft and my friend Rod Fergusson is going to be working on it.

To be honest, I don’t think the franchise could be in better hands. Heck, Rod’s Twitter handle, to this day, is “Gears Viking.” Gears is just as much Rod’s baby as it was mine. He’ll take good care of her. (Rod, I owe you a girly drink at GDC.)

Phil Spencer went out of his way to give me a phone call to inform me of the transaction last week. Phil, you didn’t have to do that, you’re a gentleman. I appreciate it; that goes a long way. 343 knocked it out of the park with Halo and I think Black Tusk will do a fantastic job with Gears.

I suppose this puts the nail in the coffin of the question “Will Gears ever come to Playstation?”

Safe to say that’s not likely to happen. (Besides, it gives me something to look forward to on Xbox One besides Titanfall and Project Spark…oh and more Halo, of course.)

Now that that’s out of the way…

I’m not going to move to Vancouver and work on it.

I’m not going to consult on it.

My headspace is in the future now, not the past. I have come to realize that until you give people something new to focus on they will obsess about the past. (good problem to have!)

So Cliffy B feels positive about the franchise moving forward, onto a new publisher and new developer. That’s a hell of a recommendation for Black Tusk, and one that will no doubt ease the minds of some fans. It’s expected – he’s probably not going to jump on the web and slag off the decision, even if he wanted to – but his “blessing” is an important one.