Gears of War: E-Day Reportedly Cost $500 Million to Make, Amid Claims It Has Sold Just 400,000 Copies

Gears of War: E-Day reportedly cost $500 million to make, amid claims it has sold just over 400,000 copies.

The Coalition’s action game launched on Xbox Series X and S and PC only, after Microsoft went down the console exclusive route following Asha Sharma’s arrival as Xbox CEO. As a Microsoft Studios game, E-Day also launched day one on subscription service, Xbox Game Pass.

This week, The Verge reported that E-Day had sold over 400,000 copies across console and PC. That’s a poor sales figure for any triple-A video game of Gears of War’s scope and prestige, but it could be an even worse commercial situation for Microsoft and The Coalition, given the extraordinary budget for E-Day.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier rubber-stamped recent reports about E-Day’s budget in a video expanding on the cancelation of Mass Effect 5 and the closure of BioWare.

“We just saw Gears of War: E-Day cost $500 million to Xbox. And that is a real number. That is real,” Schreier said. “That's what we're looking at here. That's what [AAA] games cost to make, especially in North America these days. And it’s driving these game companies to make layoffs, to do cost-cutting, to move development outside North America in a lot of cases, and to focus only on the biggest franchises that have as little risk as possible.”

The $500 million figure for E-Day was first reported by Kotaku, which said it was before marketing costs. IGN asked Microsoft for comment at the time, but it has yet to respond. It makes E-Day one of the most expensive video games ever made, and comes in at double the cost of some of its rivals. Bungie's recently released extraction shooter, Marathon, reportedly had a budget of over $250 million, for example. Concord's initial development deal was around $200 million, according to a report by Kotaku. In 2023, documents submitted as part of the Xbox Federal Trade Commission case accidentally revealed The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West each cost more than $200 million to develop. Last year, the astronomical development budgets of the Call of Duty games were revealed for the first time after a court document confirmed Activision pumped $700 million into Black Ops Cold War alone, although that was over the shooter's life cycle.

On October 13, a week after E-Day’s official release date, Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliott estimated that the game had generated $42.1 million in revenue, having sold 311,000 copies across Steam and Xbox. He also pointed to a boost to Game Pass subscriptions that appears to have been the result of E-Day’s release, although lamented the lack of a PS5 version, which may have generated increased revenue.

One question Microsoft may have when it comes to Gears is the impact on Game Pass. Has it made a big enough impact on the subscription service to offset disappointing sales revenue? With a budget in the $500 million range, can Gears of War: E-Day ever be considered profitable?

Discussing Xbox’s ongoing financial struggles this week, Sharma pointed to Minecraft and World of Warcraft Forever as setting records, and the critical acclaim Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 had enjoyed. No mention was made of Gears of War: E-Day.

What does this all mean for the future of the franchise? Earlier this month, the boss of The Coalition responded to reports that staff at the studio were worried they might lose their jobs amid the ongoing cuts at Xbox, promising the next Gears game wouldn’t take as long to make.

Eurogamer had reported on internal concern that layoffs would hit The Coalition after the release of E-Day. "The mood is certainly 'let's not celebrate the game until we're three months post launch, just in case,' which is very unusual," one source told the site. "We're just expecting the next wave [of layoffs], or being reorganized under Activision or something later this year," claimed another.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s “reset” of Microsoft’s gaming business has seen nearly 2,000 people cut already this financial year, with more to come. A number of studios have left the business or are in the process of closing down. Microsoft has also reorganized its studios, bringing Halo and Sea of Thieves developer Rare under Call of Duty developer Activision, and Grounded developer Obsidian under Fallout developer Bethesda.

The Coalition studio head Mike Crump recently told the BBC that success for E-Day goes beyond sales, saying: "We measure things like, are we showcasing the platform? Are we pushing the hardware to its limits? Are we showcasing what the Xbox is capable of? ...Our goal basically is to be the best-looking game on the Xbox and really show the industry what's possible with our hardware.”