Gears of War: E-Day is a great game and it has the highest Metacritic score of any entry in the franchise since the original Xbox 360 trilogy. But early estimates suggest the positive buzz hasn’t resulted in blockbuster sales figures. This makes it an interesting test for Xbox’s return to exclusivity, especially for a game that costs so much.
The first rumors of Gears of War: E-DayThe budget increased in June after its presentation during the Xbox summer showcase. Insider gamesTom Henderson of , said at the time he learned that the cost of shipping the shooter was “insane” and exceeded $400 million. Windows CentralJez Corden of Jez Corden pushed back on that claim. He suggested that the budget was lower and that accounting for the cost of The Coalition was tricky due to the work the studio was doing to support the teams at Xbox Game Studios.
But according to a source close to Xbox activities, the cost of Gears of War: E-Day is actually much higher. They said Kotaku it was over $500 million, and that’s not counting marketing. This would place it significantly above the announced budgets of other blockbusters exclusive to consoles of this generation, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Electronic day you would have to sell millions and millions of copies on all platforms to make up the difference. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.
Current forecasts suggest Electronic dayit’s nowhere near close. Alinea Analytics estimated that the game sold 230,000 copies in its first week and generated only $37 million in revenue, much of which came from Game Pass subscribers paying $30 to upgrade from the Premium Edition to unlock early access. These numbers have likely increased in the two weeks since launch, but the initial momentum suggests a financial hole too deep for a cross-platform frag grenade to fill. According to the source, Electronic day It was unlikely to recoup its costs regardless of the platforms used, but as a console exclusive it could help rebuild user activity on Xbox in key areas.
The hidden cost of cross-platform sales
Microsoft has not released official statistics for Electronic dayUnlike what happened shortly after, Speeds 5 released in 2019. This entry attracted over 3 million players at launch. “Performance easily doubled early in the first week of Gears of war 4 and made Gears 5 the most played Xbox Game Studios title in its first week since 2012 Halo 4” the company wrote in a press release at the time. It has so far remained silent on how many people have played. Electronic day.
Would this calculation have changed significantly if Microsoft had not chosen to remove the game from the PlayStation 5? This seems unlikely. Earlier this year, Alinea Analytics estimated that Gears of War: Reloadeda remaster of the first game in the franchise and the first Gears never appeared on PlayStation, sold 684,000 copies on PS5. Sell as many copies of Electronic day on PS5 would have translated to approximately $33 million in additional revenue after subtracting Sony’s standard platform fees.
It’s possible that a well-reviewed new entry would have made an even bigger splash on PlayStation, although it’s hard to say how much. Reloaded was only $40 while Electronic day is $70. Electronic day It is estimated to have sold less than 100,000 copies on Steam so far, although it is also available through Game Pass on PC. But no matter how you divide it, the math won’t get you anywhere near $500 million. Electronic day seems poised to be a catastrophic failure for Xbox Game Studios in this regard, and an indictment of an Xbox business and game development strategy for an entire generation of consoles.
This same calculation also potentially explains why the exclusivity of the Xbox console for Electronic day could end up generating bigger profits for the platform in the long run than a few tens of millions in additional revenue. The impacts are harder to measure but more important to the long-term health of Xbox. As a major fall exclusive on Xbox, Electronic day can create buzz, give some gamers who haven’t fired up their old Xbox Series
All of this could end up being worth more than a few hundred thousand extra sales on PS5. Maybe that’s also why Forza Horizon 6 still hasn’t arrived on Sony’s console. Originally scheduled for PS5 sometime in 2026, the cross-platform release of the hit open-world racing game has been delayed until January 2027. Why put one of the best-selling games of the year on PS5 when people are deciding where to buy the biggest releases of the year: Mad, EA Sports FC, NBA 2K27, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4And Grand Theft Auto 6?
Xbox’s Dreamcast moment
That’s an argument for turning a $500 million game that will seemingly never make its money into an Xbox Series X/S console exclusive. A recently leaked Xbox Insider survey suggests the company is planning to move even further toward changing course on the recent cross-platform pivot. It was specifically aimed at users with multiple devices and attempted to better understand how their gaming habits would change under different scenarios.
“Imagine it was announced that all future title releases from all Xbox-developed game franchises except Call of Duty will be exclusive to the Xbox console,” reads the final survey question. Minecraft Only, existing titles would no longer be available for purchase on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles and would not receive any new content updates. However, this has no impact on existing titles or content you already own. Nothing changes on PC in this announcement.
It asks users what they would do in this situation: fire up the Xbox console they already own, buy a new one, upgrade to PC, or skip the game altogether. Feedback on questions like these could further solidify Xbox’s return to exclusive content. One section of the survey even hints at the possibility for franchises like Ancient scrolls And To fall to become console exclusives. We don’t know where the games are like Ancient scrolls 6 And Diablo 5 this will end in the future, but for now, Xbox has told its players to “expect signed exclusives from us every year.”
One thing that seems certain is that sooner or later, Xbox will have to choose a lane and stop swerving into oncoming traffic. Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden called it the company’s “Dreamcast moment.” “Either you’re going to become a competitive platform with PlayStation, whereas Xbox hasn’t been competitive with PlayStation for years, but that’s not by chance,” he said last month. “You know, you can still take a chance. And you have to make some decisions about the platform.”
He continued: “We talked about exclusivity. We talked about how do you get third parties to support your platform in a meaningful way? This is all about the platform business. Or do you sit back and realize you’re the biggest games publisher in the world.”
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