Analysts Estimate Gears of War: E-Day Sold 230,000 Copies and Earned $37 Million

Analytics firm Alinea Analytics has released its first sales estimates for Gears of War: E-Day. According to its data, the game sold around 230,000 copies on Steam and Xbox, generating total revenue of about $37 million. The data covers roughly the first week after the game went on sale, including the early access period.

Alinea Analytics analyst Rhys Elliott shared the figures in a post on X, noting that they don’t tell the whole story:

Gears of War: E-Day has sold 230K copies. Steam accounts for 168K of those, with Xbox (console and PC) selling 62K. But there’s more to this story, as Xbox makes up the bulk of revenue (almost three-quarters).

Even though almost three times as many people bought the game on Steam, Xbox accounts for 74.6% of total revenue compared to 25.4% for Steam. According to Alinea’s estimates, Steam sales brought in around $11 million, while the game earned nearly $26 million on Xbox despite selling only 62,000 copies there. The reason is Xbox Game Pass.

Gears of War: E-Day launched on Game Pass on day one, October 6. According to the analysts, around 1.7 million people played the game through the subscription. In addition, about 722,000 Game Pass subscribers paid an extra $30 for a Premium upgrade that let them start playing five days early, on October 1. These upgrades alone brought Microsoft around $21.7 million, which is most of the game’s total revenue on Xbox.

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In total, counting both sales and Premium upgrades, nearly 950,000 players paid for the game or for early access to it. According to Elliott, these numbers show how Game Pass is “cannibalizing” full-price sales on Xbox: there are roughly 12 Premium upgrades for every copy sold on the platform. The analyst also suggested that if at least three-quarters of the players who bought the upgrade had purchased the full game instead, E-Day’s revenue could have approached $40 million.

The modest sales stand out even more given how the game was received by critics. Gears of War: E-Day scored 87 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic, with 89% of critics recommending it. The highest score came from Generaction Xbox, which called it The Coalition’s finest work, while the lowest came from The Guardian, which gave it a 6 out of 10. Critics praised the return to the dark, horror-tinged atmosphere of the original trilogy, the chemistry between Marcus and Dom, the brutal and fast-paced combat, and the visuals.

Reviewers named the lack of significant innovation as the main drawback. Many consider E-Day a return to form for the series after the more muted reception of Gears of War 4 and Gears 5.