What an incredible waste of money in my opinion.
Essentially an IP is about lore, characters, setting, environment, identity and its intrinsic value. Star Wars and LOTR for example are worlds of their own with a rich history that has an immediate worth.
With Gears:
- The characters are about as memorable as that time when you did that thing, y'know.
- The world is boring as shit.
- The character designs are big white guys with huge muscles and guns, plus a token black guy... namely any action movie or action game around.
- The enemies are cookie cutter and have zero depth.
- The story is end of the world warzone stuff, basically any game that has been made. No plot to speak of, nothing memorable about it.
- Hell even the shorthand of GoW brings to mind God of War to me and a fair few others to at least devalue the asset.
- The engine, art and tools are all last gen now... pointless.
- The game had run out of all steam at Gears of War 2 for me, I have no idea how they think they are selling enough to cover the cost of this let alone make a profit. I guess everyone will buy reams of merchandise with their favourite characters and dialogue quoted. Yeaahhhhh....
Halo I understood, the characters are recognisable, the story laid out clearly and the enemies design are memorable at least. The plot, dialogue and such are all debatable but sure the Halo universe is vast with lots of potential. And games without the Chief have been successful already, multiple times.
Btw, remember all those Brute Force, Blinx, Crimson Sea, Tao Feng etc. sequels on the 360? Seems like few make the cut in transitioning across and Gears wouldn't have been something I would bet the farm on.