Gears of War: E-Day Sells Only 230K in Week One, Analyst Says

Did you pick up Gears of War: E-Day last week? If so, you're in a surprisingly small club. According to early estimates from Alinea Analytics, the Xbox exclusive has reportedly moved just 230,000 copies in its first week across PC and Xbox.

Breaking it down: Steam accounts for 168,000 of those sales, while Xbox—including console and PC—totals only 62,000. These are unofficial numbers, so take them with a grain of salt. But they paint a picture of a launch that's off to a soft start, especially for a game meant to lead Xbox's renewed push into exclusives.

The culprit? Game Pass. Alinea's head of marketing analysis, Rhys Elliott, says the subscription service is "cannibalising much of the premium revenue." While 1.7 million players accessed E-Day via Game Pass, the raw sales numbers suggest most people are happy to rent rather than own. That's a big shift for a flagship title.

Interestingly, 722,000 of those Game Pass users paid an extra $30 to upgrade to the Premium Edition for early access. That's nearly 12 upgrades for every one copy sold on Xbox. Elliott calls the $70 premium SKU "functionally dead" on the platform, noting that in a world without day-one Game Pass, many of those players would have bought the game outright. Instead, they paid $30 for early access to something they don't own. As Elliott puts it, "Xbox is, in effect, charging its most valuable customers the least."

Revenue-wise, the Xbox ecosystem reportedly generated $27 million, with total earnings around $37 million. That's not nothing, but it's far from the blockbuster numbers Xbox likely hoped for. And it's unclear how many new Game Pass subscriptions E-Day actually drove.

Microsoft has been aware of this tension before. Internal documents from the Activision Blizzard merger noted a decline in base game sales after titles hit Game Pass. At the time, Microsoft told IGN the model "offers gamers and game creators more choice and opportunity." But for a game like E-Day, which earned strong reviews (including a 9/10 from IGN's campaign-only review), the sales split raises questions about the long-term viability of day-one Game Pass releases for big exclusives.

Meanwhile, The Coalition studio head Mike Crump recently called E-Day a "natural choice" for Xbox exclusivity and promised the next Gears won't take nearly as long to make. So the franchise isn't going anywhere—but its sales strategy might need a rethink.

What do you think? Are you more likely to buy a game outright or just play it on Game Pass? Let us know in the comments.