Saber is co-developing Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition with 343 Industries. They got the job because of their enthusiasm for the Halo franchise. According to Karch, ”We gave them a very strong pitch and showed a lot of passion for it - they vetted us out very closely. We said ‘we’re going to over-deliver on this’, ‘we’re going to beat your expectations’, ‘we’re going to take it as seriously as we would a $20 million new IP that we need to go all in on’.”
Karch added, ”We realise how important this is and we’ve gone all in on it. It’s Microsoft’s crown jewel - that’s my opinion. People can say Gears, but as big as Gears is it isn’t Halo. I don’t think they have a Gearsfest every year. I don’t know, maybe they do, they had a Halofest and Anniversary was a key component of it and it showed really well.”
Saber Interactive’s next game is similar to Gears of War with a unique twist: just like Gears, it’s a third person co-op shooter with a sticky cover mechanic - the twist is that players can manipulate gravity with The Grappler, which is very much like the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2.