Epic's Gears of War was undoubtedly one of the reasons for the Xbox 360's early success but despite this it seems another installment in the series is someway off.
Speaking in an IGN podcast Microsoft's Phil Spencer said "I want to find a great Gears game."
He says that while he believes People Can Fly's Gears of War: Judgment was a good game it didn't quite match up to previous installments.
"I thought we did a good job with Judgment, but I don't think it hit the level of quality we saw in the previous games. I think review scores showed that. Sales showed that. I really think we'd need to take a step back with Epic and think about… I don't want to call it a reboot because I think it's an overused term but think about where that franchise goes and how to expand what it was.
"I'd love to have that conversation. I do talk to the Epic guys often. They're also busy right now. I think they've said Gears is kind of on the back burner for them. So I think it would be a situation when the opportunity came up at the right time it'd be great to sit down with them. They're, again, the right team to work on that game. Trying to find another team to do that game I think is possible, but you'd want to make sure you did that very carefully along with them to make sure we had the right thing in place."
While he couldn't provide details on what Gears of War might look like on Xbox One he did think Epic needed to consider how it could expand the games' universe to provide broader scope and said it should be "more gritty."
"I think that franchise would need to be… not reworked but you'd need to think about how to expand the universe and what people are doing.
"Maybe take it more gritty, I don't know. You'd want to do something with it, because I think it did run its course on 360. And it was a great success on the 360, but it doesn't quite have a story arc of a thing like Halo or something, at least the way it's played out in the games."
While a new Gears of War may be someway off Microsoft's other big exclusive shooters; Halo and Titanfall, are both set to hit Xbox One in 2014.
Epic is currently developing Fortnight and working on its Unreal Engine 4.
