Gears of War 4 multiplayer co-developed by Quake Wars, Brink Studio

Splash Damage, the London-based developer of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Brink, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, is working on the multiplayer component of Gears of War 4.

The detail was revealed to Game Informer by The Coalition, the new studio founded by Microsoft to serve as custodians of the Gears of War property, much like 343 Industries does for Halo.

Rod Fergusson, who worked on the original trilogy of Gears of War games and is studio head of The Coalition, noted that Splash Damage has experience working on multiplayer within the game's universe, having contributed to Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. The studio was enlisted to help "with a lot of the level design stuff" because of this.

"Especially with meshing of multiplayer maps, we're tapping into the expertise they got from Gears of War: Ultimate Edition," he said. "They also have a lot of expertise with online systems, in terms of matchmaking from Ultimate Edition ... They basically had to rewrite for Xbox One."

Fergusson added that The Coalition was keen to work with Splash Damage, particularly as it trains up its new team of devs on the Gears property.

"When you get a strategic partner like Splash Damage, we talk about training up our own team on Gears, but when you have another team that's trained up on Gears, we definitely want to work with them."

As previously revealed, Gears of War 4's story takes place over the span of 24 hours. It's also been confirmed that Gears of War 4's co-op is limited to two players locally and online, and not four, as was the case with Gears of War 3.

The sequel's resolution and frame rate has also been confirmed, and The Coalition hasteased that a PC version is "possibly" in the works.