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?
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/gears-of-war-e-day-reportedly-cost-500-million-to-make-amid-claims-it-has-sold-just-400000-copies
