Recently, analysts estimated that Gears of War: E-Day had earned around $42 million in revenue in its first week on the market, but a recent report from Kotaku claims that revenue is but a drop in the bucket compared to the game's overall budget. The report cites an insider "familiar with Xbox's business" and claims that the production budget alone, excluding marketing costs, for Gears of War: E-Day was over $500 million. This puts the game's overall estimated revenue at well under 10% of what Microsoft spent to get it out of the door.
In early October, employees at The Coalition, the Xbox Game Studios subsidiary responsible for development, expressed concerns about potential layoffs shortly after launch, especially given the ongoing Xbox Reset and the current climate in the gaming industry overall. The ongoing tumult at Xbox makes it difficult to judge what the fallout will be if E-Day doesn't meet its targets, complicated by Xbox's recent push for Game Pass subscriptions and its late pivot towards Gears of War: E-Day as an Xbox-exclusive game. Recent analytics data revealed that Game Pass subscribers were responsible for around 74.6% of Gears of War: E-Day's revenue, with over 1.7 million players accessing it via the Game Pass subscription, and it may turn out that some new subscribers that came to Game Pass for E-Day could stay in the long-term.
Source: TechPowerUp News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing