What you need to know
- Gears 5 developer The Coalition is well-known for always being at the forefront of Unreal Engine game development.
- Today, The Coalition has announced that they're officially shifting resources to the next-gen-only Unreal Engine 5.
- This has exciting implications for the multiple new projects coming in the future from The Coalition.
- It does mean that development on Gears 5, however, will slowly start coming to an end over the next few Operations.
Gears 5 is one of the best showcases for the prowess of next-gen consoles like the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, as well as what can be accomplished with Epic Game's Unreal Engine 4. The Coalition, the developer of the popular Gears (previously Gears of War) series, has long been at the forefront of Unreal Engine game development. Today, The Coalition looks to continue that legacy by moving to the next-gen only Unreal Engine 5 for "multiple new projects in the coming years."
What does this mean? It means that The Coalition has officially begun to shift resources and teams to the new Unreal Engine 5 for game development, and it means that development on the already-excellent Gears 5 will now start to come to an end. Gears 5 has already received a ton of post-launch support, most recently with the arrival of the fantastic Gears 5: Hivebusters DLC, and now we're going to start seeing the end of this active content support.
Through the end of 2021, The Coalition will launch several new updates for Gears 5 with more content and featured playlists, and will drop new playable characters, maps, and more with Operations 7 and 8 (of course following Operation 6 from February, 2021). Gears 5 isn't being cut off instantaneously, and instead will enjoy more updates through the rest of the year until The Coalition is fully invested in the development of several unannounced projects (which won't be revealed for a while, most likely) on Unreal Engine 5.
Gears 5 is one of the best games on Xbox, and it'll be exciting to see what The Coalition is able to accomplish with the power of next-gen gaming hardware and the versatile Unreal Engine 5.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
All your gaming needs, in one subscription.
Is the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate the best value in all of gaming? It's possible. Ultimate bundles your Xbox Live Gold subscription, an Xbox Game Pass subscription for both Xbox consoles and Windows PCs, and Xbox Cloud Gaming for on-the-go. That means access to hundreds of games, with more added all the time, for a single monthly subscription cost.
Zachary Boddy is the Minecraft Expert and a News Writer for Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore. They have been gaming and writing for most of their life, and have been freelancing for Windows Central and its sister sites since 2019, with a focus on Xbox and PC gaming. You can find Zachary on Twitter @BoddyZachary.
