Gears of War: E-Day was a chance for Microsoft and Xbox to show that they could still produce games that appealed to their most die-hard fans. A prequel to the beloved franchise, E-Day marked the first major release under new Xbox leadership, led by CEO Asha Sharma. While she wasn’t there for most of development, the game still felt like an important part of Xbox’s future.
Based on 70 critic reviews, E-Day received an 87 out of 100, almost exactly in line with its user score of 8.6 out of 10. Having played it myself, I can say that I loved it; it brought me back to my younger years with characters I adore and bloody action and bromance in equal parts. Seeing the main characters, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, team up again made me feel like the series was back on track. I was extremely excited to see what The Coalition would do with the franchise next.
However, I may be waiting a long time for a new Gears of War entry, as The Verge has reported two factors that point to E-Day being a product failure. The first bit comes from Kotaku, which reported that the game cost over $500 million to produce. That doesn’t even factor in the cost of marketing.
That wouldn’t be so bad; yes, it is a lot of money to make up for, but Gears is a popular franchise, and the reviews are good, so maybe they can do it! According to The Verge, the game has only sold 400,000 copies.
“Gears of War E-Day has the highest Metacritic score of any entry in the franchise since the Xbox 360 days, but it faces some tough questions around how much it costs to create a AAA game these days and what success looks like. Kotaku reports that E-Day cost “over $500 million” to make, excluding marketing budgets. This has generated a lot of discussion online over E-Day’s success, especially as it’s a controversial test for any potential return to Xbox exclusivity. One source tells me that more than 400,000 copies of the game have been sold across Xbox and Steam, but the big question is whether Microsoft was happy with its Game Pass numbers for E-Day, and whether that revenue offsets any additional sales on Xbox and potential PS5 sales if a port had been released”
Now that is bad news. I know a lot of people who have returned to Game Pass to try the game, but that doesn’t mean they will stay with the service after they’ve had their fill of chainsawing Locusts in half.
I suspect Game Pass rarely offsets the lost sales, or else Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 would be on the service day one, instead of Xbox letting players know it won’t be until next year during the Holiday season.
Xbox really has no one to blame but itself here; it has conditioned its audience not to purchase its exclusive titles. So when players saw that Gears of War was out, they chose the cheaper option of one or two months of Game Pass over purchasing the game outright. We’ll have to wait and see whether Xbox addresses this report or reverses course on the exclusivity and ports it to PlayStation 5 to make up for lagging console sales.
