Alinea counts 230,000 copies sold for E-Day

Alinea Analytics estimates that Gears of War: E-Day sold 230,000 copies across early access and the full release. About 168,000 of those were on Steam, and about 62,000 full copies were bought on Xbox and the Microsoft Store.

The analysts tie the modest full-price sales on the home platform to day-one Game Pass. By their estimate, more than 1.7 million people launched the game through the subscription instead of paying $70 for a copy.

Revenue is still about $37 million: roughly $26 million on the Xbox side and $11 million on Steam. Of that, $21.7 million came from the $30 Premium upgrade, which opened the game five days early. 722,000 Game Pass subscribers bought it. That is almost 12 upgrades for every full-price Xbox copy, and about 950,000 people paid for the game in one form or another.

Retention differs too. On Xbox, 54% of players spent under five hours in the prequel, against 32% on Steam. 17% quit within the first hour. Set against the strongest press scores the series has had in 15 years, Alinea calls the Xbox-platform start commercially hard and asks whether a big story premiere belongs in the base subscription on day one.

Alinea Analytics report