Gears of War 4 is one of the most anticipated games of the latter part of this year, but this will be the first entry in the series to not come from Epic Games in some capacity. Instead coming from The Coalition, the game looks fantastic so far with the beta going on right now. We have no idea what the budget for Gears of War 4 actually is going to be, but Epic Games had some grand plans back in the day that would have been incredibly expensive.
Polygon recently released a very long and detailed feature on the history of Epic and where they are going moving forward. There was little question that some talk of the handing over of the Gears of War franchise would come up, which brought some interesting details.
In this feature, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was interviewed and discussed how they initially were trying to make their plans for the next entry in the Gears of War franchise, but why it just didn’t work out.
Sweeney explained how the original Gears of War only cost $12 million while bringing in about $100 million in revenue, but as the series continued, the games become more pricey and therefore had much less overall profit.
“The profit was shrinking and shrinking. We calculated that, if we built Gears of War 4, the budget would have been well over $100 million, and if it was a huge success, we could break even. Anything less could put us out of business.”
Sweeney went on to say that this is what led them on the path they are on today with the free-to-play Paragon and Unreal Tournament, and the still unknown Fortnite. It certainly would be interesting to find out just how much The Coalition ends up spending on Gears of War 4, but that is a number we may never truly find out.
