Gears of War: E-Day is a fantastic game and has the highest Metacritic score of any entry in the franchise since the original Xbox 360 trilogy. But early estimates suggest that the positive buzz hasn’t translated into blockbuster sales numbers. That makes it an interesting test case for Xbox’s return to exclusivity, especially for a game that costs so much. Rumors about Gears of War: E-Day’s budget first surfaced in June after it was shown during Xbox’s summer showcase. Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson said at the time that he had heard the cost of shipping the shooter was “insane” and over $400 million. Windows Central’s Jez Corden rejected that claim. He suggested that the budget was lower and that accounting for the cost of The Coalition is complicated due to the work the studio does supporting the teams at Xbox Game Studios. But according to a source familiar with Xbox’s business, the cost of Gears of War: E-Day is, in fact, much higher. They told Kotaku it was more than $500 million, and that’s not including marketing. That would put it significantly above the reported budgets of other console-exclusive blockbusters this generation, such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. E-Day would need to sell millions and millions of copies across all platforms to make up the difference. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment. Current forecasts suggest that E-Day is not close. Alinea Analytics estimated that the game sold 230,000 copies in its first week and generated just $37 million in revenue, a large portion of which came from Game Pass subscribers who paid $30 to upgrade to the Premium edition to unlock early access. These numbers will have increased in the two weeks following launch, but the initial push points to a money hole too deep for any cross-platform fragmentation grenade to close. According to the source, E-Day was unlikely to recoup its costs no matter which platforms it came to, 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 yet to release official metrics for E-Day performance, unlike what it did shortly after the release of Gears 5 in 2019. That entry attracted more than 3 million players at launch. “The performance easily doubled Gears of War 4’s first-week debut and made Gears 5 the most-played Xbox Game Studios title in its first week since 2012’s Halo 4,” the company wrote in a press release at the time. So far it has not been said how many people have played E-Day. Would this math have changed significantly if Microsoft hadn’t decided to remove the game from PlayStation 5? It seems unlikely. Earlier this year, Alinea Analytics estimated that Gears of War: Reloaded, a remaster of the first game in the franchise and the first Gears to appear on PlayStation, sold 684,000 copies on PS5. Selling that many copies of E-Day on PS5 would have translated into approximately $33 million in additional revenue after subtracting Sony’s standard platform fees. It’s possible that a well-reviewed new entry would have caused an even bigger splash on PlayStation, though it’s hard to say how much bigger. Reloaded was only $40 while E-Day was $70. E-Day is estimated to have sold fewer than 100,000 copies on Steam so far, although it is also available through Game Pass for PC. But no matter how you divide it, the calculations won’t get you anywhere near $500 million. E-Day looks set to be a catastrophic failure for Xbox Game Studios in that sense, and a critique of an Xbox game and business development strategy for an entire generation of consoles. That same math is also potentially why Xbox console exclusivity for E-Day could end up generating bigger benefits for the platform in the long run than just a few tens of millions in additional revenue. The knock-on effects are harder to measure but more significant for the long-term health of Xbox. As a big fall exclusive on Xbox, E-Day can generate buzz, give some gamers who haven’t turned on their old Xbox Series All of that could end up being worth more than a few hundred thousand additional sales on PS5. Perhaps that is why Forza Horizon 6 has not yet arrived on the Sony console. Originally scheduled for PS5 sometime in 2026, the cross-platform launch of the hit open-world racer was delayed until January 2027. Why put one of the year’s best-selling games on PS5 right when people are deciding where to buy the year’s biggest releases: Madden, EA Sports FC, NBA 2K27, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and Grand Theft Auto 6? Xbox’s Dreamcast moment That’s one argument for turning a $500 million game that will seemingly never make its money back into an Xbox Series X/S console exclusive. A recently leaked Xbox Insider survey suggested that the company is looking to lean even further to reverse course on the recent cross-platform pivot. It was specifically aimed at users with multiple devices and tried to gain insight into how their gaming habits would change in different scenarios. “Imagine if it were announced that all future releases of titles from all game franchises developed by Xbox, except Call of Duty, would be exclusive to the Xbox console,” the final question in the survey reads. “For Minecraft only, existing titles will no longer be available for purchase on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles, and will not receive any new content updates. However, there is no impact on any existing titles or content you already own. Nothing changes on PC in this announcement.” Ask users what they would do in this situation: turn on the Xbox console they already own, buy a new one, switch to PC, or skip the game altogether. Answering questions like these could further solidify Xbox’s shift toward exclusive content. One section of the survey even hints at the possibility of franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout becoming console exclusives. It’s unclear where games like The Elder Scrolls 6 and Diablo 5 will end up in the future, but for now Xbox has told its players to “expect exclusives from us every year.” One thing that seems certain is that sooner or later Xbox will have to pick 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 be a competitive platform with PlayStation, something Xbox hasn’t been competitive with PlayStation for years, but that’s not out of the question,” he said last month. “You know, you can still try again. And there are certain decisions you have to make about that with respect to the platform.” He continued: “We talk about exclusivity. We talk about how to incentivize third parties to support your platform in a meaningful way. This is all about the business of the platform. Or you sit back and realize you’re the biggest game publisher in the world.”
