Gears of War: E-Day has sold about 230,000 copies since launch, according to an estimate from market research firm Alinea Analytics. Microsoft hasn’t released a sales figure of its own, so the number is an outside estimate, not an official count.
Rhys Elliott, Alinea’s Head of Market Analysis, published the estimate on Oct. 9 in Alinea’s newsletter. The window runs from the game’s advance-access launch on Oct. 1 through its full release on Oct. 6 and the days that followed. By Alinea’s math, Steam accounts for 168,000 of those copies, and Xbox, meaning the Xbox console and PC storefronts combined, accounts for 62,000.
Game Pass players are counted separately
The copy count leaves out the much bigger Game Pass audience. E-Day launched day one on Game Pass, and Alinea estimates about 1.7 million people played it through their subscription rather than buying a copy. Of those, Alinea says about 722,000 paid $30 for the Premium Edition upgrade, which unlocked up to five days of early access starting Oct. 1.
That upgrade money tilts the revenue picture toward Xbox. Alinea puts E-Day’s revenue at about $37 million so far, with roughly $26 million from Xbox and about $11 million from Steam. Counting the upgrades, Elliott writes that nearly 950,000 people paid something for the game. On Xbox alone, he estimates nearly 12 Game Pass upgrades sold for every copy.
Elliott argues that Game Pass is “cannibalising” premium sales and writes that “Xbox is, in effect, charging its most valuable customers the least.” He still calls the game a “banger,” but says the result is soft for a flagship release and blames the business model rather than the game.
How much weight the estimate can carry
Push Square notes that Alinea’s methodology is unclear and that its reliability is still debated. The site also reports that Microsoft hasn’t put out a statement disputing the numbers. At Forbes, Senior Contributor Paul Tassi points out that Alinea isn’t working from official Xbox data. He says there’s no real way to know how many Game Pass players would have paid full price otherwise, or how many subscriptions the game added or kept.
The estimate has also revived talk of a PlayStation version. Push Square points to reporting from around Summer Game Fest that an almost-finished PS5 build of E-Day exists at The Coalition. Microsoft has maintained that the game stays an Xbox console exclusive.
RCG covered the game’s Steam player count at full launch earlier this week.
