Developer People Can Fly’s most recent game Outriders may have received tepid reviews when it launched in 2021, but the studio is still well-known for quality first-person shooter action. After all, Outriders still played great, it was just let down by its story, and the studio has previously worked on other respected shooters like Painkiller and Bulletstorm. On top of that, it’s helped out with several Gears of War games, which is why the recent news that the team is currently working on an unannounced Xbox Game Studios project isn’t too surprising.
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As first spotted by Eurogamer, People Can Fly has officially announced on the Polish financial site Interia Biznes that its next title will be fully funded by Microsoft. The game, currently called Project Maverick, has an expected budget of $30m-50m. Of course, the listing doesn’t include any information about what this project might actually be, but it’s possible to make some educated guesses.
People Can Fly has been primarily an FPS studio and came to prominence for many gamers when it worked on the PC port for the original Gears of War. After it released Bulletstorm in 2011, PCF went on to develop Gears of War: Judgment. That, of course, doesn’t confirm that the studio is heading up or assisting on the next Gears of War game, but it is very possible. After all, we haven’t seen a mainline Gears game since Gears 5 launched in 2019. Since then, our most recent update about Gears 6 is that JD Fenix’s voice actor Liam McIntyre hadn’t heard anything from The Coalition about a new game being in the works. Obviously, that doesn’t mean it isn’t, but it could suggest that the game is further off than fans hope.
Either way, this is an exciting development for People Can Fly. They enjoyed some of their biggest successes working alongside Microsoft, and getting the budget for a new game from the publisher hopefully means it can get back to delivering quality FPS action soon. We wouldn’t expect to hear much about the People Can Fly and Microsoft project for a bit though. This news certainly makes it seem like whatever this project is will take at least a few more years in the oven before it’s ready for primetime.
