Gears of War: E-Day is a terrific game and it has the highest Metacritic score of any entry in the franchise since the original Xbox 360 trilogy. But early estimates suggest the positive buzz has not resulted in blockbuster sales numbers. That makes it an interesting test case for Xbox’s return to exclusivity, especially for a game that cost so much.
The first rumors of Gears of War: E-Day‘s budget arose in June after it was shown during Xbox’s summer showcase. Insider Gaming‘s Tom Henderson said at the time he’d heard the cost to ship the shooter was “insane” and over $400 million. Windows Central‘s Jez Corden pushed back on that claim. He suggested the budget was lower and that accounting for the cost of The Coalition is tricky because of the work the studio does supporting teams across Xbox Game Studios.
But according to one source familiar with Xbox’s business, the cost of Gears of War: E-Day is in fact much higher. They told Kotaku it was over $500 million, and that’s before you include marketing. That would put it significantly above the reported budgets of other console-exclusive blockbusters this generation, like 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 E-Day‘s nowhere close. Alinea Analytics estimated the game sold 230,000 copies in its first week and generated just $37 million in revenue, a big chunk of which came from Game Pass subscribers paying $30 for the Premium Edition Upgrade to unlock early access. These numbers will have gone up in the two weeks since launch, but the initial momentum points to a money hole too deep for any multiplatform frag 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 contribute to rebuilding user activity on Xbox in key areas.
The hidden cost of multiplatform sales
Microsoft hasn’t released official metrics for E-Day‘s performance yet, unlike it did shortly after Gears 5 released back in 2019. That entry brought in over 3 million players at launch. “The performance easily doubled the first week’s debut of Gears of War 4 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. It has so far stayed quiet on how many people have played E-Day.
Would this math have meaningfully changed if Microsoft hadn’t chosen to pull 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 ever appear on PlayStation, sold 684,000 copies on PS5. Selling that many copies of E-Day on PS5 would have translated to roughly $33 million in additional revenue after subtracting Sony’s standard platform fees.
It’s possible that a well-reviewed new entry would have made an even bigger splash on PlayStation, though how much bigger is hard to tell. Reloaded was only $40 while E-Day is $70. E-Day is estimated to have sold fewer than 100,000 copies on Steam so far, though it is also available through Game Pass on PC. But no matter how you slice it, the math will not get you anywhere close to $500 million. E-Day seems poised to be a catastrophic miss for Xbox Game Studios in that regard, and an indictment of an Xbox business and game development strategy for an entire console generation.
That same math is also potentially why Xbox console exclusivity for E-Day could end up yielding greater 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 to Xbox’s long-term health. As a big fall exclusive on Xbox, E-Day can build buzz, give some players who haven’t turned on their old Xbox Series X/S in a while a reason to come back, and potentially nudge overall engagement on the platform up in a holiday period when players are making lots of choices about what games to buy and what platforms to buy them on.
All of that could end up being worth more than a few hundred thousand additional sales on PS5. Perhaps that’s also why Forza Horizon 6 still hasn’t arrived on Sony’s console. Originally due out on PS5 sometime in 2026, the hit open-world racer’s multiplatform release has been delayed until January 2027. Why put one of the best-selling games of the year on PS5 right as people are deciding where to buy the biggest releases of the year: 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 that leaked suggested the company is looking at leaning even further into reversing course on the recent multiplatform pivot. It was aimed specifically at users with who own multiple devices and trying to gain insight into how their playing habits would change under different scenarios.
“Imagine it was announced that all future title releases from every Xbox-developed gaming franchise except Call of Duty will be console-exclusive to Xbox,” the final survey question reads. “For Minecraft only, existing titles would no longer be available for purchase on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles, and would not receive any new content updates. However, there is no impact to any of the existing titles or content you already own. Nothing changes on PC in this announcement.”
It asks 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 entirely. The feedback to questions like these could further cement Xbox’s shift back toward exclusive content. One section of the survey even hints at the possibility for franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout to become 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 signature exclusives from us every year.”
One thing that does seem certain is that sooner or later, Xbox will need to pick a lane and stop swerving into oncoming traffic. Ex-PlayStation executive Shawn Layden called it the company’s “Dreamcast moment.” “Either you’re going to be a platform competitive with PlayStation, which Xbox has not been competitive with PlayStation for years, but that’s not out the window,” he said last month. “You know, you can still make another run at it. And there are certain decisions you have to make around that about the platform.”
He continued, “We talked about exclusivity. We talked about, how do you incentivize third parties to support your platform in a meaningful way? This is all things around the platform business. Or you sit back and realize you are the biggest game publisher in the world.”