Earlier today, we shared a report from well-known journalist Jeff Grubb about the upcoming Gears 6, and now he's also been speaking as part of Thursday's Game Mess Mornings show at Giant Bomb about The Coalition's other plans for the future, claiming that two projects have recently been cancelled at the Xbox studio.
Grubb advises that these two cancellations have been "reflected in the layoffs that happened at Microsoft" recently, and that the studio is now fully focused on Gears 6 and making that their next upcoming game.
Here's a bit of what he's had to say (thanks to VGC for the transcription):
“They have cancelled that smaller project, as well as another project, so there have been two games cancelled there."
“This was all reflected in the layoffs that happened at Microsoft, which did hit The Coalition a little bit. The studio is now going to move on fully to Gears 6. I say now, it has likely moved on to Gears 6 in full over the course of the last year, but definitely that will be their next game.”
The Coalition had previously been confirmed to be working on "several unannounced projects" by Xbox's Aaron Greenberg back in February of last year, but no further details were provided at the time.
Obviously we haven't received any confirmation from the studio about this yet, but Grubb has an excellent track record, so it sounds like Gears 6 is the only upcoming game we can expect to see from The Coalition as things stand right now.
What do you make of this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
[source videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 25
There seems to be a lot of cancellation news lately from various devs. Another effect of the covid situation maybe.
I imagine cancelations are way more common than we know about.
I hate this sort of news. And for one reason only.
They could have been a lot further along with Gears 6 and probably almost nearing to release date. Maybe 2023 or 2024 who knows.
Have said it before on here, Xbox have their studios working on too many games at once.
Sony get the big AAA games out like them or not because they focus on that one game mainly and on one or two systems PS4 and PS5.
Don’t forget an Xbox studios has to focus on series s and x and pc and cloud gaming on all devices. That is enough in its self.
Perhaps finally they are taking note and realising this after all my moaning 😂😂😂
Don’t spread your assists to much else you end up with nothing or long delays.
@Dezzy70 You do realize the Sony’s studios on average work on 1-2 games at a time; and they’ve been steadily increasing studios size so they could increase that to 3 games, right.
There is nothing canceled.
The problem with this sort of news is that they are about information we shouldn't even have.
It is an unannounced project, that alone should be reason enough for us to not worry about the sorts of cancelation.
There is no cancelation of something that wasn't even announced to the public yet.
Cancelation are problems when its like Scalebound in the past, or if Microsoft come out and canceled Forza Motorsport before its release.
Every studio tries lots of things, and not everything become a full fledge project.
People should start to stop giving attention to this and consider only information officially released by the devs. No announcement, no cancelation.
@Floki
Yes they do sometimes but they get the games out, and that’s due to focus on that game and probably micromanaging.
Finally Xbox look like they are they starting to do the same, earn their money and manage their studios. Starting with 343i as we have seen.
Just seems like bad news after bad news at Xbox lately
All because the rich people decided to manufacture a recession to take back the gains workers made during the pandemic.
Shame!!! as smaller projects have grabbed the spotlight lately with Pentiment & Hifi Rush. So be interesting to know what these were
I really like the gears series and definitely want to see more, but it’s no wonder MS studios continue to struggle. Sometimes studios need a break from working on one series to try something different. Fatigue is real, and the last thing a company wants is to lose good developers who want to try something different. New games and IP are how they can test new ideas, and occasionally you can make hits. Obviously it wasn’t announced, but it’s clear the rumors that they were working on something new were true, and it sucks we’ll likely never get to see that. I understand cuts are happening due to the economy, but it would have been a nice change of pace to see something new from this studio.
If Microsoft continues forcing these studios to specialize in one game, great developers are going to leave and it’s going to continue to get harder to create new stories. Sequels are hard to top, because everyone always wants the game to be better than the last, but reality is that it’s very hard to find new creative ways to improve a sequel. Also would like to see a game set during the pendulum wars one day.
I'm of the opinion that when an AAA developer has unused assets resulting from a cancellation or change in art direction, those assets should be given to an indie developer to use however they'd like in a new game in exchange for the AAA developer obtaining publishing rights over that game. That way the indie developer gains AAA assets at no cost to them, and the AAA developer hasn't sunk time and money into creating assets for nothing.
This is good news in my opinion. I love when a company has full focus on one project.
@Floki not only Sony. For the last few years, Obsidian alone was working on Avowed, Grounded, Outer Worlds 2 and Pentiment. That’s just one studio efficiently working on 4 projects in parallel.
One of the reason studios like 343 baffle me, taking, what? 8 years to deliver a Halo game and nothing else?
@eduscxbox
Well, I’m afraid to announce I have canceled my first Xbox exclusive game, a third person cinematic farming simulator with a heavy focus on VFT (very fungible tokens) due to time constraints and bad economic climate.
This was a very real project, I even opened Visual Studio and downloaded (but didn’t install) Unity.
@UltimateOtaku91 I think the reality is this often happened we just didn’t hear about it. It’s quite common for studios to try a few ideas during pre-production but sometimes when you try and scale things up you realise it’s not going to work out and better to stop there than throw good money after bad.
However if we did believe that there are more cancellations now it may be because the cost of making games is exponentially higher and so there is more to lose, perhaps need to be a bit picker
@Tharsman "...8 years to deliver a Halo game and nothing else?"
Weren't they also the developers of the huge undertaking of the Master Chief Collection and updates?
@Scummbuddy MCC released in 2014, Halo 5 in 2015, Infinite in 2021. So actually 6 years from their last release to infinite, not 8, but still just that.
They did spend a nice chunk of that fixing the botched launch of MCC, though, but that should had not launched in such a state to begin with.
@Scummbuddy 343i wasn’t entirely sole on MCC. Saber Interactive and Certain Affinity did most of the heavy lifting on that title.
Studio's must often have 'ideas' and 'concepts' that they think may well end up as 'great' games so they may start them, Prototype them, develop them up and see if they have something 'good' enough to keep going with and then for whatever reason, it gets 'cancelled' - which maybe because they are now needed to go 'full steam' ahead on the 'big' project or that their 'ideas, concepts' never really developed into the 'big' idea they thought it could be in reality, or their bosses didn't think they were worth investing more money into at this point...
I never 'cared' about these 'projects' because they haven't been marketed, sold as reasons to buy into the ecosystem to play - like Scalebound for example. These are 'behind closed doors' projects, experiments etc not 'fully' realised games that we as 'gamers' have been shown and now 'expect' to play in the future.
Gears 6 doesn't exist to me yet and won't until its 'officially' revealed and 'sold' to us as customers (even if its used to promote and sell the 'long term' future - like Perfect Dark, Fable etc of the ecosystem), it doesn't exist.
Aside from the rumor that this game was "small" we really don't know anything about what this game was(and probably never will.) I wouldn't immediately jump to this is terrible news or some larger issue at Microsoft. Its possible that the idea they had just wasn't coming together.
Someone looked at this game and decided it wasn't worth pursuing with the staff they have. Not really instilling confidence that we are missing out on something special even though I am a big coalition fan. Hats off to Xbox for letting studios make passion projects when not a lot of other major publishers are but it doesn't look like this one made the cut.
@Dezzy70 Great point, they seem to have too many areas for their games and it is causing some issues. Better not have canceled my Gears collection, that should be being worked on by someone else anyways. That collection might be the only gears we have for a while, cause 6 seems a ways off.
Who needs new IP's when you can just make the same ***** forever (that isn't even remotely as popular as it was 15+ years ago)
Meanwhile Sleazy Phil is hyping up his near 70B buy of Activision.
as per insiders...the 2 projects the coalition was working on was small projects (AA scale) but the goal wasn't commercial but it was to train the team to master unreal engine 5 and release AA games while doing so, but the studio was gifted and they adapted fast (matrix demo is a wonder) so Microsoft decided to cancel those 2 games and get back to their main project gears 6
What a shame. Of all the MS studios I rate the coalition, and I would love to see them realise a project or two that wasnt tied to Gears.
With the layoffs and cancellations, the messege has been sent with a slap - "you get back to making Gears. Thats what you do."
Hopefully the payoff is the next Gears coming quicker! 😁
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