The studio is using this new project to familiarize itself with Unreal Engine 5.

Recently, Gears of War studio The Coalition confirmed that it was going to be using next-gen engine Unreal Engine 5 for its future projects, and that as it looks to familiarize itself with the toolset, it wouldn’t be making announcements for new games for some time to come. This followed not long after reports emerged that while The Coalition was working on Gears 6, it also had a new IP in the works. Now, journalist Jeff Grubb has provided potential details on what that new project will be.

Speaking in a new podcast episode published by colteastwood, Grubb said that the new IP that The Coalition is working on is going to be a smaller, more experimental project. The purpose of this project, Grubb says, is for the studio to familiarize itself with Unreal Engine 5 and learn its ins and outs during the course of development. According to him, even this new game is going to take some time to develop (which is understandable, since The Coalition its shifting its pipelines to a whole another engine), and once the studio is accustomed to Unreal Engine 5, it will move back to Gears of War in full, and begin work on Gears 6 in earnest.

Recently, Grubb also said that it was unlikely that Gears 6 would show up at Microsoft’s E3 show next month, which, of course, falls in line with what The Coalition themselves would go on to do. If Grubb’s newest statements are accurate (and he’s been known to be a credible source of information in the past), it should be interesting to see what this new smaller project turns out to be. We’ll keep an eye out for new details, of course, so stay tuned.