Welcome to What’s Up, our weekly blog where we’ll recap everything that’s happened in the past week and talk a little about future developments. In What’s Up this week:

Gears Tactics goes Gold!

Ranked Gridiron arrives next week

What’s Next for Gears 5

Bunny Hunt and Batista Bomb Execution out now!

Gears Tactics Goes GOLD!

On Tuesday, we were excited to announce Gears Tactics has gone gold and is on track to release this month for PC on April 28, 2020. Can you believe that another Gears game is coming out this month?! Insane times.

There is sooo much in Gears Tactics that we’re rolling out a series of Developer Blogs to drop some sweet sweet details prior to launch. The first one focused on the gameplay pillars of dropped this week on Steam and GearsTactics.com. Psst…there’s another one tomorrow!

It’s not just us talking Tactics though. There’s a ton of great preview coverage out there on the web that we recommend giving a read / watch if you’re looking for all the juicy details. Here’s just some of the preview coverage so far:

For those of you looking for every morsel of information possible, rest assured there is PLENTY more to come over the next 3 weeks on the road to launch. And, if you are picking up Gears Tactics on Steam and already own Gears 5 on Steam, you’ll get 15% off the pre-order price too.

For those of you huge Gears fans who can’t / choose not to play on PC, Gears Tactics will be on Xbox consoles later this year. Just like how we’ve poured everything into making Gears Tactics a PC first experience, we’ll be making sure it feels right at home on your controller when we bring Tactics to consoles later this year. We’ll make the wait worth it.

Coming Up For Gears 5

It’s been 9 short days since the launch of Operation 3 but we’re far from done. Development continues on future updates for the game, as well as some near term changes based on your feedback. Here’s what’s coming up next.

Ranked Gridiron

We’ve accelerated the launch of Ranked Gridiron based on the feedback we’ve received since the launch of Operation 3, and we’re excited to announce it will be releasing on Tuesday, April 14th!

To celebrate the launch of Ranked Gridiron, we’ll have a certain Character Skin you will be able to unlock by winning rounds of Gridiron. We’ll reveal all next week.

Game Balance

Thank you for giving us plenty of feedback since the launch of Operation 3. Our team has been busy sifting through it, and we are finding it very helpful as continue to refine the game.

As we’ve mentioned in the past, our commitment is to be more responsive and open wherever we can. We will address these topics in full as soon as possible and keep you updated on changes as they are finalized – not just in words, but with actions too.

Over the next 14 days, we’ll have some new blogs to dive into the current direction for the game – including an updated movement and gameplay blog – and opportunities to speak with key members of the team through our Developer Live Streams.

We’re also actively exploring opportunities to provide our players opportunities to speak with developers outside of just the dev streams, including via our forums and Game With Developer sessions on Gears 5.

Next for Gears 5

In the longer term, we’ve working on extensive plans to address core areas in the game that will improve the overall experience. This includes reworking aspects of the game (based in part on your feedback) where necessary – including our Ranked system. As the final pieces fall into place, we’re going to tell you about where we are going, what we are doing, and – in rough terms – how long we expect each element of the plan to take.

While we believe Operation 3 was a good step forward for the game, the road ahead is where we will deliver the most dramatic changes and improvements to the game.

This Week In Gears 5

Even in the world of social distancing, we’re fully in the Easter spirit with Sniper-Guardian variant of Bunny Hunt (now with increased ammo off spawn!).

To double your gains this weekend, we’ve decided to activate a free Boost weekend beginning Friday April 10th until Sunday April 12th. Each day has a free day of Boost on offer, which doubles your Multiplayer XP gains (great for Totems!) and Stars earned from completing objectives.

For all the information on everything Gears 5 this week, including the free Batista Bomb dropping into your inventory, head here.

That’s it from us this week. We’re sad we couldn’t run a Developer Stream this week, but next week, we will be back with Jamie (Lead Gameplay Designer) to talk through all the gameplay balancing, mechanics and changes. We’ll even let you know a little bit about him in What’s Up beforehand.

Until then,

TC