Fenix risen?

Gears of War: E-Day's sales are reportedly lighter than you might expect from one of Xbox's flagship names, but pure sales numbers don't paint a complete picture of the bloody shooter's performance. A sizable chunk of revenue actually came from Game Pass subscribers paying for the game's Premium Edition upgrade.

That's according to new estimates from Alinea Analytics' Rhys Elliott, which reports Xbox has sold around 230,000 copies of Gears of War: E-Day since the prequel's advance-access release at the very beginning of the month - with 168,000 of those sales coming from Steam and 62,000 coming from Xbox consoles and PC.

Game Pass seemingly affected those stats to a large extent, like many other Xbox-published games this generation. Around 1.7m Locust-grinders played the shooter through their Game Pass subscription and more than 722,000 of them also bought the game's $30 Premium Edition upgrade.

You see, owners of the Premium Edition that costs $99.99 were allowed to fend off the hordes early - from the 1st of October - but Game Pass subscribers could and still can drop a cheaper $30 for the Premium Edition upgrade and all its add-on extras. E-Day then launched in full for regular Game Pass subscribers and Standard Edition buyers on 6th October.

When you include pure sales, microtransactions and those Premium Edition upgrades, Gears of War: E-Day has seemingly made above $37m (about £28m). As Alinea noted, almost a million people paid something for E-Day.

"In a world without day-one Game Pass, many of these folks would have bought E-Day at $70," the analyst speculated. "They paid $30 for five days early access to something they don't own. Xbox is, in effect, charging its most valuable customers the least, based on a hangover from a tried-and-exhausted strategy from a previous administration."

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has already stopped new Call of Duty games from launching directly into the subscription service. With so much change afoot, it's not hard to imagine blockbuster games like Gears of War or Forza following suit.

Another interesting tidbit comes from player overlap. On Xbox, more than 80% of E-Day players previously tried another Gears game, Call of Duty, Fortnite, GTA 5 and Halo Infinite. On Steam, 72% of players came from Counter-Strike and 65% of folks came from Helldivers 2, which is probably unsurprising when you think about how similar E-Day's Horde Siege mode is to Arrowhead's PvE smash hit. Both have wide-open maps pulling you in all directions for side objectives and bug-like aliens to tear into chunks.

The Coalition studio head Mike Crump recently claimed that E-Day is a "great foundation" for future sequels, and promised the next Gears won't "take nearly as long" to make after the seven-year gap between entries. With the game fully emerged, all eyes now turn to The Coalition - several people at the studio spoke to Eurogamer and feared post-launch layoffs could be on the horizon.

"Gears of War: E-Day is a game of contrasts: conservative by its very nature, but with enough technical proficiency and iterative thinking to make its old-fashioned ideas feel competent and engaging," Eurogamer's Gears of War: E-Day review said. "Bleeding edge graphics with 20-year-old design sensibilities drip into this bloody crucible of familiarity that does nostalgia right."

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