Gears of War: Why 2030 Should Be the Target for the Next Game?

The studio says faster development is on the way, but the franchise still has to choose between making another prequel and finishing the story of Gears 6.

The future of Gears of War is getting clearer in some ways and murkier in others. A recent interview with The Coalition's head made one thing clear: the studio plans to release games faster than it has lately. Nobody yet knows whether the next release is a follow-up to E-Day or a return to the main timeline with Gears 6.

Start with the speed. Since Gears 3, the gaps between releases have grown. The studio brought in People Can Fly for Judgment, then made Gears 4, Gears 5, and E-Day, with each one landing years after the last. That fits the wider industry. In the days of the original trilogy, a studio could finish three games in four or five years, and Uncharted, Halo and the Gears of War series all did it.

By 2012 to 2014, development cycles had stretched to somewhere between five and ten years. In that interview, the studio said it put a lot of work into its engine and technology while building Gears of War: E-Day, so it can make future games faster. Plenty of other developers are saying the same thing.

It's fair to hope The Coalition is being honest and really does have a firm grip on the tech. Some people will say four years is still a long time. That's fair, and a new game every two or three years would be great for plenty of franchises, including Gears of War. But if a game that used to take six years now takes four, that's a solid compromise.

It cuts two years off the schedule without pretending the process got eighty percent faster. So the next Gears of War game should land by fall 2030. Until then, expect continued support for the latest release, with updates to Versus and Horde, but nothing beyond that is likely to keep it going for four years, and that isn't really the goal.

Fall 2030 sounds far off, but 2027 is almost here.

If the next game isn't out by then and it still takes five or six years, the promises about faster development haven't changed much. Three years would be fantastic. Anything longer is where the real concern starts. The deeper problem is the same one the studio faced before the prequel was announced.

Gears 4 and Gears 5 put the team in a bit of a bind. A sixth game would finish that arc, and it's fully developed, with leads, supporting characters, a new threat, and a base story built across those two games. Still, that era didn't land as well as the original trilogy. The latest game pulled in big player numbers, though estimates point to weak sales. The series may be rebounding, but that stretch was never as strong as it should have been.

That brings up how the studio got here, and the answer isn't comfortable. Another prequel would leave roughly 14 or 15 years between the latest game and the first one, which is a lot of room. You can bring back Marcus and Dom together, add other characters and dynamics, and tell plenty of stories.

Star Wars got a pile of movies and shows out of the Clone Wars, a fairly short period, and a worldwide war lasting more than a decade gives Gears of War the same kind of space. The catch is that the Gears of War series depends on just a few characters. An anthology is one way around that, and Judgment already tried it.

It earned the weakest critic scores the series has seen, and fans probably group it with Gears 4 and Gears 5, with Judgment at the bottom of the pile.

Still, with 14 years to work with, you could pick any location or cast you like and step away from Marcus and Dom.
Staying with those two carries risk as well. More doesn't have to mean better, and building out their story could end up hurting it. The point of expanding it would be to make Gears 1, Gears 2, and the events of Gears 3 hit harder, but piling on more could have the opposite effect. Each path has trade-offs.

You can decide the anthology idea didn't work and drop it. You can stay with Marcus and Dom because you've learned that's what fans come for, and that's a good lesson to have. But every time you bring them back in a prequel, you risk overdoing it.

On the other side, they're hugely popular, and the timeline is full of events that have only been mentioned. Showing them instead of telling people about them pays off. Fans seem split, but plenty of online discussion comes down to one request: finish Gears 6. That doesn't always come from love for the story.

Some defend it and say it doesn't deserve the hate it gets. It isn't amazing, and it isn't terrible, and it never quite reached the standard it needed. The general feeling among Gears of War fans is to wrap up the second trilogy so the story feels complete, then move on to whatever comes next. There are characters and a fleshed-out story there.

The risk is betting that people will return to an era that was already unpopular, and that's the uncomfortable part of why the studio moved on in the first place.

It began a new trilogy with Gears 4 and Gears 5, and instead of making the third game, as you'd do nine times out of ten, it went the other way. Gears 4 takes place about 25 years after Gears 3, and the studio then jumped back almost 40 years.

Whether you like it or not, that says something about its mindset. It has said Gears 6 is still on the table, but actions carry more weight than words, and leaving it behind to go back nearly half a century suggests a lack of trust in the current timeline.

Retcons might smooth some of that over, especially around the choice made at the end of Gears 5. The numbers make it harder to read. The latest game reportedly hasn't sold well but is doing great on Game Pass, so it's tough to know what to take from that.

Sales prove very little here, and they keep suggesting the series isn't a huge seller, yet people are clearly playing. They may play anything with the name on it, or they may be drawn to the original trilogy and Marcus and Dom. A sixth game would face the same murky picture on Game Pass. 

The only other direction is the older games. The first one got a remaster, and then a remaster of that remaster that, from what's known, sold poorly. Gears 2 is arguably the best in the series, and Gears 3 is a complete, satisfying game too.

A project built around those two is possible, but the Ultimate Edition and Reloaded results would probably scare the studio off.

Realistically, the options are another game set shortly after the latest one, or the sixth game. The better lean is to ride out the earlier timeline for a while and see where it leads, since you can always jump ahead later. The trouble is that the issue never goes away.

Release five games set before the first one, and heading into the next, you'll face the same debate: another one, or finish the main story. It's a tough spot, and few franchises have boxed themselves in like this, but the studio has to work its way out, and a strong Game Pass showing won't settle it alone. That's where Gears of War stands heading into 2027.