Microsoft Did Not Interfere With Gears Of War 4 Development, Says Dev

Due to developer The Coalition being chosen for development duties for Gears of War 4 despite previously being in the midst of working on a new IP, there has been some talk regarding whether or not Microsoft might have forced the developer into doing certain things with the game. The game’s high-priced season pass and in-game microtransactions are two big examples of this, though a new interview suggests that the developer had full control of the game they developed.

The Coalition’s Rod Fergusson and Ryan Cleven recently did an interview with Eurogamer, where they said that “There was no central mandate from Microsoft to make this game one way or the other. The development cycles on this game are long, and [the in game microtransactions were] something that very early on we were interested in.”

They continue by adding “It’s sort of, you push the platform by asking: ‘these are the kinds of things I want to do in the game, can the platform support that?’ And you also get questions like ‘hey, these are our platform directives, as a first-party studio, can you help light that up on the platform?’ But even as a second party we had that. When party chat first came online on Xbox 360, they were like ‘hey Epic, can you make sure that party chat is implemented?’ We were helping to support the platform initiatives there too.”

So, this puts to rest the skepticism that some had with the game’s development cycle. While some have wondered whether or not the game’s overall safe approach may have been due to Microsoft, it seems like The Coalition made the exact game they wanted to.