A new report tied to Gears of War: E-Day is hugely concerning for the future of the franchise. Back in 2025, Xbox released Gears of War: Reloaded, a remastered version of the first entry in the shooter series, on PS5 in addition to Xbox Series X/S and PC. This release suggested that future Gears of War entries, particularly that of E-Day, would end up also coming to PS5 as well. However, upon fully revealing E-Day earlier this year, Xbox announced that the latest entry in the franchise would only be exclusive to its own platforms. And while many Xbox fans were thrilled to see the company returning to releasing traditional exclusives, it looks like this choice may not have benefitted the publisher and the future outlook of Gears of War.
Videos by ComicBook.com
According to The Verge, Gears of War: E-Day has currently only sold a little more than 400,000 copies across Xbox and PC. For a franchise as big as Gears of War, these sales are particularly underwhelming, especially given that E-Day was also said to have cost a whopping $500 million to make. As a result, E-Day is nowhere close to breaking even for Xbox off of pure unit sales alone.
Obviously, the caveat with all of this is that Gears of War: E-Day launched directly onto Xbox Game Pass, which means that the Xbox subscription service is how many may have chosen to play it for themselves. While E-Day could have driven many to subscribe or resubscribe to Game Pass, it’s still hard to know if the number of incoming subscriptions warranted the time and money that Xbox and developer The Coalition put into making the game.
Assuming that Xbox is unhappy about the performance of Gears of War: E-Day, it could prompt leadership to rethink exclusives moving forward. Not only would this potentially pave the way for E-Day to come to PS5, but it might shift Xbox into fully embracing its role as a third-party publisher and doing away with exclusives entirely.
As for the future of Gears of War, it’s hard to know what Xbox might do with it next. Outside of Halo, Gears of War is far and away the biggest franchise that Xbox owns. However, if E-Day couldn’t even amass one million sales after nearly a month on the market, it indicates that interest in the series could be at a low point. This would surely make it that much more difficult for Xbox to greenlight a new installment in the future, especially one that would cost half a billion dollars to make.
If nothing else, the reception to Gears of War: E-Day has been quite positive so far, with the game amassing the highest review scores in the series since Gears of War 3. Whether or not this positive word of mouth will generate more sales in the future as E-Day naturally ends up getting discounted remains to be seen.
More Gaming
-
Courtesy of FromSoftware -
Courtesy of Warhorse Studios
