Randy Pitchford quietly announced a new Brothers in Arms game months ago and nobody seemed to notice.
As spotted by Exputer, Pitchford announced that Gearbox is working on a new entry to the Brothers in Arms series during a podcast interview with Ted Price of Insomniac Games back in April this year. While the episode of The Game Maker's Notebook originally aired back in April, news of the announcement has finally been picked up after the podcast was uploaded to YouTube this month.
While discussing the larger topic of studio announcements and how these have to be timed correctly to avoid sending fans' expectations into overdrive, Pitchford spoke about his preferred method for revealing games using the release of Borderlands 3 as an example before casually announcing a new Brothers in Arms title to reinforce his point.
"I didn't announce Borderlands 3 until, like, it was beta," said Pitchford. "And it sucks because we're working on another Brothers in Arms game, but I'm not saying sh*t until we have it. We have fans that really love that and they're just going to have to suffer." For those who'd like to listen to the excerpt, it begins around the 53-minute mark.
The Brothers in Arms series began life back in 2005 with the release of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 for PC and consoles. The title garnered interest as it poised fans in command of their very own small tactical units as they looked to maneuvere through enemy forces. Since then a number of subsequent titles in the series have released – the most recent of which was Brothers in Arms 3: Sons of War in 2014 for mobile.
In 2015, Gearbox announced that it had cancelled production on Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 – a title that looked set to return the Brothers in Arms franchise to PC and consoles. Following its cancellation, Pitchford said at the time that the game had eventually been repurposed and became what we know today as the free-to-play shooter Battleborn, which released in May 2016. It's not clear whether the new Brothers in Arms game would reprise Furious 4's ideas.
In other Brothers in Arms news, the studio announced last year that it is adapting the World War 2 shooter series into a TV show with the help of showrunner Scott Rosenbaum. While very few details have since emerged about the show, it is understood that the show will feature characters based upon real people from the period as it follows a team of eight soldiers on a mission to rescue their colonel from the Nazis before they discover the D-Day plans.
If you're looking to relive more from the Brothers in Arms franchise, then make sure to check out this article we published last year that discusses just some of the reasons behind how the tactical shooter series managed to captivate its audience so well.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.