Gears of War: E-Day Reportedly Cost $500 Million, and Sales Look Thin

Gears of War: E-Day has only been out since October 6, and it's already the center of one of the biggest conversations in gaming. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier says the game cost Xbox about $500 million to make, and a separate report says it has sold just over 400,000 copies on Xbox and Steam (VGTimes).

Seeing those two numbers side by side is pretty rough. (That's a lot of Lancer chainsaws.) It's worth saying up front that Microsoft has never shared the budget publicly, so treat both figures as reports for now.

Where does the $500 million number come from?

Schreier brought it up during a broadcast about EA closing BioWare. "We just saw Gears of War: E-Day cost $500 million to Xbox," he said, and then added, "That is a real number, that is real" (VGTimes).

He's not the only reporter hearing enormous numbers. Insider Tom Henderson had earlier estimated the budget at over $400 million, and Chris Dring of The Game Business said his own sources lined up with that range (VGTimes). The $500 million figure reportedly doesn't include marketing. Windows Central's Jez Corden didn't dispute it, but he suggested it may cover The Coalition's whole budget since its last game, which could include more than just E-Day.

How many copies has E-Day sold?

A source told The Verge's Tom Warren that the game has sold "more than 400,000 copies on Xbox and Steam" (GamingBolt). That's up from an earlier report of around 230,000 copies earlier this month.

The catch is that copies sold don't tell the whole story for a first-party Xbox release, since a lot of people play those games through Game Pass instead of buying them. Even so, 400,000 sales against a reported $500 million budget is a tough look. The game itself is doing fine with critics, with an 87 Metascore from 70 reviews (GamingBolt).

Why does this matter beyond Gears?

Schreier used E-Day as an example of a much bigger problem. "The reality is that BioWare was shut down for the same reason that game companies have been laying off tens of thousands of people over the last few years," he said, adding that "game budgets have grown exponentially" (VGTimes). We covered that shutdown in our story on EA closing BioWare.

My read is that E-Day is a good game caught in a bad equation. When a well-reviewed shooter from one of Xbox's biggest series can't come close to covering its reported cost in sales, studios are going to keep playing it safe with fewer, smaller bets. That's the real reason fans should care about this number.

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Images are official screenshots from Gears of War: E-Day, from Xbox and The Coalition.