Gears of War has made its big return to Xbox after a 7-year hiatus with a wave of strong reviews, and even the ever-difficult to please fans seem to be enjoying it. But how is it selling?
Not great. But that’s also not surprising. The data comes from analytics firm Alinea Analytics, so as always take it with a pinch of salt, Their methods of determining numbers has proven to be pretty damn close to reality numerous times, but they can and do make mistakes or can be off by quite a bit.
According to Rhys Elliott of Alinea, E-Day has managed to sell 230k copies since it launched, with 168k coming from Steam. It doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? Of course, Game Pass complicates things a lot.
The data apparently shows that 1.7 million people have accessed E-Day via Game Pass. Of those, 722k paid the $30 upgrade that let them play five days early, so combined that’s just shy of a million people.
But what about actual regular sales on Xbox? Just 62k people actually bought the game on console, which demonstrates how much Game Pass cannabilises regular sales.
As Rhys points out, “Those 722K willing-to-pay players generated about $21.7M via the upgrade. If three quarters of this group – mostly US and European audiences – bought E-Day outright, that’s nearly $40M.”
Overall, Alinea’s numbers estimate Gears of War: E-Day has generated roughly $37 million in revenue, which again sounds tiny, because it is, especially for a first-party title like Gears of War. But the reality is, Xbox runs on very different metrics now, and it’s difficult for us to know they calculate that each game brings in via Game Pass subscriptions etc. The service doesn’t seem to be growing right now, but Gears of War: E-Day is presumably still helping retain the existing players.
