It looks like Xbox’s Gears of War studio is working on something new

Xbox’s Gears of War studio The Coalition could be planning to work on an original game series.

That’s according to the LinkedIn profile of one of the company’s level designers, which was spotted this weekend claiming they had been working on a “new IP” project for the last six months. The employee later removed the listing.

The Coalition said in May that it was preparing to shift its focus to next-gen development using the Unreal Engine 5 technology.

However, the studio claimed it wasn’t planning to announce any new games in the near future. The Coalition will continue to support Gears 5 through Operation 8, it said.

“As we look to future games, we’re excited to start shifting our resources to next-gen development using Unreal Engine 5,” the studio said in May.

“Shifting to a new engine is a big undertaking, so we want to be clear that we will not be announcing any new projects or titles for some time.”

Next week The Coalition is set to show off a new Unreal Engine 5 demo at the all-digital GDC 2021. Offering a look at the inner workings of UE5’s new visual systems, the ‘Alpha Point’ demo will be presented by The Coalition’s technical director Kate Rayner, and technical art director Colin Penty.

The hour-long session will be held on Tuesday, July 20 at 1.20pm PT / 4.20pm ET / 9.20pm BST. The Coalition created the Alpha Point demo on Xbox Series X internally to evaluate UE5, it said.

Xbox’s studios boss recently discussed how the platform balances its portfolio, and claimed that not all of Xbox‘s upcoming games are made with live services in mind.

Matt Booty told The Guardian that Xbox’s success with cross-platform, connected games like Minecraft and Sea of Thieves doesn’t mean every game it’s publishing in the future will be built with a constantly evolving live service in mind.

“We don’t have any direction or mandate that says every game has to be an ongoing, sustained game,” Booty explained.

“Take Psychonauts. There might be a Psychonauts 3, but I’m not going to tell [designer] Tim Schafer to go make it. Knowing the history of games that he makes, I don’t think he’s going to be making a game that has seasons and goes on for five years.”