Gears of War 4 Sells an Estimated 617K Units First Week at Retail - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 07 November 2016 / 65,473 Views
The third-person shooter from Microsoft Studios and The Coalition - Gears of War 4 - sold 617,107 units first week at retail according to our estimates. First week sales can be viewed on the VGChartz Global Weekly Chart for the week ending October 15.
Breaking down the sales by region, the game sold best in the US with 342,226 units sold (55%), compared 188,813 units sold in Europe (31%). The game also sold 20,776 units in Japan (5%). Looking more closely at Europe, the game sold an estimated 83,916 units in the UK, 21,979 units in Germany, and 24,321 units in France.
Here is how Gears of War 4' first week sales compare to other games in the franchise:
- Gears of War 3 (X360) - 2.96M
- Gears of War 2 (X360) - 1.87M
- Gears of War: Judgment (X360) - 0.76M
- Gears of War 4 (XOne - 0.62M
- Gears of War (X360) - 0.61M
- Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (XOne) - 0.28M
Gears of War 4 launched worldwide on October 11.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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So I just realized that this game is an almost perfect comparison to Gears 2. They both came out at around the same point in their respective consoles life cycles, and their user bases are less than 1.5 million units apart (in the Xbox Ones favor).
If we estimate digital sales for Gears 4 to be 40% (expect this percentage to fall during the holidays) and...lets say 5% for Gears 2 (it was 2008 after all) that gives you about 1.1 million units for Gears 4 and just under 2.1 million units for Gears 2.
what happened to actual console exclusivity? Microsoft should have stuck to the basic rule while promoting the console brand. This is the price.
Not great, but with digital I'm sure it could be over a million. 4 million lifetime is my guess.
yeah, that's about what I'm thinking aswell. Actually, my gut is saying just under. 3.7 or 3.8 million. But who knows.
I had already figured about 4 million. But you look at gears ultimate and it opened with a few hundred thousand and has had amazing legs.
@danno_omen There was also a really long time where you pretty much couldn't buy an Xbox One without getting Gears Ultimate.
@Normchacho that is very true however do you not think that going forward that will be the case with Gears 4? Once we get through the holiday season and all the holiday bundles are gone I'm sure Microsoft will stick with just a gears 4 bundle.
@danno That's possible, but I also thought they would do that with Halo 5. They may leave Gears out of the bundles in favor of another spring game.
I don't know if they have a big enough game in the spring. I mean if Sea Of Thieves or Halo Wars 2 does come out this spring I'm sure they will bundle it but it wont be a long running bundle sort of like Quantum Break when it was released. I think either way Gears 4 should have some pretty good legs I would think.
Didn't even beat Judgment? Was there something bad about the game, or did the new cast just not appeal to players?
It didn't perform critically as well as previous Gears games (excluding judgement) and it's running into the Halo problem. It's a new studio making a game from a now old and maybe a little tired franchise. Commercially, the best days for Gears are likely behind it.
Judgement came out before digital sales was as significant. Especially in a world where your X1 games also work on PC. So in physical and digital, safe to presume it crushed Judgment. Lifetime sales will also be better for Gears 4.
@Mr Puggsly Yeah it will beat Judgement by a lot. I never realized it before but Judgement died after it launched. Nearly half of it's lifetime sales came in the first week it was on sale.
P.S. and not to bring up old wounds, but GOW:A did end up outselling it. So I guess...it wins the battle of least worst selling, disappointing game?
This game sold 20k in Japan?! Really? That's impressive. Is that a typo cause on the GoW4 page it lists Japan as zero.
Yeah...that actually doesn't seem right. Nearly 1/3rd of Xbox One owners in Japan bought Gears in it's first week?
@Ka-pi96 Really? Because that would be amazing.
That's great! Somebody should probably fix that!
I live in japan. I can only bought usa version in amazon. My thoughts,horde is too long ! but fun.
I bought it digitally. My sale isn't counted here and that's a shame. Its a great game and future sequels should be off on the right foot thanks to this game. The Gears franchise is in the right hands.
The only Gears of war that beat this game was Gears of war 2 and Gears of war 3. Gears judgement got beat because of digital sales. So not too bad. BF1 and COD took away a lot of the momentum. Microsoft should've released this game at the beginning of the year and away from the competition like Gears of war 3.
Brace yourselves! The "I bought it digital so that clearly means everyone else did!" kids are coming!
Congratulations MS. You fucked up big time. Same goes for Coalition. Pathetic new cast, weak story, bland environments, abysmal reveal, marketing and presentation. The MP is great, however long that may last. Without bundles, this now niche series will have zero legs and will struggle to sell past 1.5 million retail.
I think legs will be better than you predict. Holidays will help this game as well.
No, thats not how it works. Games on Windows sell like shit. I am highly doubtful that digital made a huge impact on this one. Maybe add or take 50k from the total, but even so, this game under performed, no other way to put it.
You think the digital take nearly doubled because of Play Anywhere? That seems way too high. I can't imagine Play Anywhere accounting for more than a 5% bump in digital sales.
So if we assume Gears would have a slightly higher than average digital take rate anyways just because I expect digital sales to increase as time goes on and it is a Play Anywhere title, I imagine it's at like 35-40%. But likely not more.
Check your math.
50% digital would put it at 1.24 million.
30% digital means about 1 million first week on Xbox One alone.
Yeah there's no way digital was that high. 40% max. And that's being very generous.
Wait! After doing some digging Ka-pi has a point. EA said that total PS4 and Xbox One sales should be around 30% digital by the end of 2016. There are tons of games that are digital only or are heavily digital skewed. AAA retail games probably aren't anywhere near 30% digital.
@Shika EA did bring up their own sales, but they were talking industry wide.
“We think the industry is going to probably [be], by calendar year end, around 30 percent. And our internal estimates are around 29 percent for ourselves,”
In the west 20% is usually considered the minimum.
That would make sense. Games tend to get rotated out o major retailers fairly quickly unless it's a huge game so it would make sense that later sales would skew digital.
