Gears of War: E-Day’s console exclusivity hasn’t changed Xbox’s declining hardware trend, according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, who says he isn’t seeing the company’s recent changes translate into better results.
Speaking on The Game Business Show, Piscatella discussed the early impact of Xbox’s decisions and Asha Sharma’s reign.
“Saying Gears is going to be exclusive hasn’t made any difference in terms of the hardware trend. In fact, it keeps getting worse.”
His criticism extended to removing Call of Duty’s day-one availability through Game Pass, which he said had reduced Xbox engagement without an apparent benefit in the figures he follows.
“Everything they’re doing seems to be getting Twitter likes from the most passionate part of their fan base, but other than that, in terms of actual results, I’m not seeing anything right now. And I’m looking really hard.”
Piscatella praised E-Day itself, even describing it as a “Gears-ass Gears of War game”, but argued that exclusivity restricts its audience without yet delivering the intended benefit to Xbox. In other words, Xbox has lost the extra sales a PS5 version of E-Day would of brought in, and gained nothing in return so far.
This follows yesterday’s update on E-Day’s reported sales and budget. The Verge’s Tom Warren reported, citing a source, that the game had sold around 400,000 copies across Xbox and Steam. That isn’t an official Microsoft sales announcement, and copies sold shouldn’t be confused with the total number of people playing through Game Pass.
Of course, I think there’s a fairly substantial caveat here: it’s early days. My reading of Asha Sharma’s return to console exclusives is that it’s a long-term plan to give people reasons to buy into Xbox again. Building that confidence could take a string of games over several years, especially when people are being asked to spend hundreds of pounds on another console. One Gears release isn’t going to rebuild lost confidence,since Xbox has become known as the brand which flips plans on a whim.
That doesn’t make these early observations uninteresting, though. I’m a huge Gears fan, but my feeling is that the series simply doesn’t have the pull it once did. I can still be excited about Marcus and Dom returning while wondering how many people outside the existing audience feel strongly enough about it to buy an Xbox.
That’s my impression, rather than something these figures prove. Nor does a continuing hardware decline mean E-Day persuaded nobody to buy a console; sales could have been worse without it. But if Xbox is accepting a smaller audience for Gears in the hope of strengthening its platform, I think it’s fair to ask when that trade-off is going to start paying off.
