Microsoft laid off 268 Xbox staff including Juan Vaca, story director for Gears of War: E-Day, just one week before the game's early access launch. The timing is particularly harsh as Vaca had celebrated the game going gold days earlier, and similar layoffs affected Halo Studios' cinematic director Josh Daniels one day after his promotion.
Gears of War: E-Day achieves 4K@60FPS on PC with surprisingly modest GPU requirements (RTX 5070 Ti instead of flagship), demonstrating strong optimization from developer The Coalition. The Unreal Engine 5 game launches October 6 with advanced ray tracing, upscaling technologies, and solid performance targets across PC and Xbox Series X|S.