It won't be long now until Gears of War: Judgment arrives on the Xbox 360, and that's good news for fans of the franchise who've been hankering to get their fix. With excitement beginning to build for the series' next installment, it's easy to forget that there was once talk of a Kinect-exclusive Gears of War title. Now some screenshots of the alleged game have surfaced, and they depict a project that was still in very early development before eventually being scrapped.

According to VGLeaks, the Kinect game was tentatively called Gears of War: Tactics, and it was intended to provide gamers with an experience dramatically different from a standard entry in the series. As the name suggests, Tactics would have thrown players into the role of a master tactician, with the primary objective being to strategically move various COG soldiers throughout a map in order to defeat hostile Locusts.

The photos of Gears of War: Tactics in action were allegedly taken from a video demonstrating the Alpha build of the game, hence why the graphics are still in an less-than-ideal state. Still, the game looks as if it would have been a rather compelling title that utilized the motion sensing technology of Kinect in a unique fashion.

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VGLeaks seems to think that the game's development may have shifted over to the Xbox 360's successor (codenamed Durango), but — given how long the game has been rumored to have been in development — that doesn't seem like a probable scenario. Cliff Blezinski even confirmed that a title known as Gears of War: Exile had been cancelled prior to his departure from Epic Games. Assuming that Epic hasn't dismissed two GoW games as of late, it's safe to say that Tactics is indeed Exile and has ceased development.

It's always possible that Microsoft and Epic Games still have plans to resurrect the game once the Xbox 720 makes its inevitable debut, but only time will tell if Gears of War: Tactics was ever meant to see the light of day.

Do you think a Kinect-exclusive, real-time strategy game is something Gears fans would enjoy?

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Source: VGLeaks