Gearbox CEO Teases A Major Announcement For The Game Awards

Fans have been asking Gearbox Software what they've been up to lately, and one fan asked about a possible Duke Nukem and Gears of War crossover. The response from Gearbox president Randy Pitchford was an interesting one.

The comments were posted up on Randy Pitchford's Twitter account. December 1st is when this year's Game Awards takes place, which is like the Oscars for video games. Instead of dismissing the suggestion about a Duke Nukem and Gears of War crossover, Pitchford seems to be riding the hype train toward The Game Awards.

The interesting thing here is that the conversation started when Pitchford made a tweet about Gearbox receiving "rage mail" from a fan about ranked multiplayer games in Gears of War 4, a game that was developed by The Coalition and published by Microsoft. Duke Nukem Forever was a cobbled together mishmash from various developers and published by Take-Two Interactive.

I'm not even sure how Gearbox ended up with the rage mail, but maybe someone was thinking about Gears of War but typed in "Gearbox" into Google and ended up on their website and was just too lazy to leave and decided to send the mail to them?

Regardless, this instance of someone being angry about the ranked games in Gears of War 4 inadvertently led to Randy Pitchford announcing that there's going to be a new game being announced at The Game Awards.

Given the gulf of property rights they would have to cross in order to make a Duke Nukem and Gears of War game possible, there's not a strong likelihood that such a thing would happen. However, it would be pretty awesome to see The King make his way into a game like Gears of War. In fact, it's not outside the realm of possibility that maybe the announcement isn't a new game but new DLC for Gears of War 4 featuring Duke Nukem as a playable character? It's not an impossibility.

Of course, Duke would lose a lot of his speed and agility that he has from his own game series (and let's not forget that he originally has his roots firmly planted in the fast-paced, 2D platforming genre), but curb-stomping enemies and chainsawing them to pieces doesn't seem like a bad experience to have while playing as the savior of the world.

Gearbox didn't exactly win everyone over with Duke Nukem Forever, and the last thing they did was re-release the original Duke Nukem 3D as part of the anniversary for the game. A lot of fans are hoping that they can rekindle his glory with a proper entry in the series.

If they give the franchise a little time to sit on the shelf and then bring it back with something groundbreaking in the first-person shooter genre, then it could help Gearbox recover from their current downward spiral that they've been on after games like Battleborn tanked on the market.

We'll find out exactly what they have up their sleeve for Duke Nukem during The Game Awards on December 1st.