Gears 5 Sets Record for Biggest First-Party Launch on the Xbox One - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 06 April 2020 / 5,746 Views
Publisher Microsoft and developer The Coalition announced Gears 5 set a new record for the biggest first-party launch on the Xbox One. The game had over three million players in its opening weekend and setting Game Pass records.
"Thanks to the incredible support from our fans, Gears 5 kicked off the Holiday season strong – attracting over three million players in its opening weekend and setting new records for Xbox Game Pass with the biggest launch week of any Xbox Game Studios title this generation," reads the blog post from Aaron Greenberg, Xbox Games Marketing General Manager.
"The performance easily doubled the first week’s debut of Gears of War 4 and made Gears 5 the most-played Xbox Game Studios title in its first week since 2012’s Halo 4. First week performance includes the four-day early access period beginning Friday, September 6, which was exclusive to Gears 5 Ultimate Edition and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members. On the PC, Gears 5 has nearly tripled the performance of its predecessor, becoming the biggest-ever launch for Xbox Game Pass for PC, and Xbox Game Studios’ best-ever debut on Steam."
Gears 5 is available now on the Xbox One and Windows PC.
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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The money made from this is hard to quantify. How many people have gamepass on a promotional basis? How many people were already subbed to gamepass before Gears 5 came out? How many new paying gamepass subs did Gears 5 add? What percentage of the $10 a month from gamepass should be counted as money made by Gears? What if somebody has Gamepass so they can play five or six different games? Should the $10 a month be split evenly between all games, or what? At what point does the money from Gamepass pass up the money made from a $60 purchase? What are the costs of running the servers? Do new XBL Gold subs since the launch of Gears 5 count as money made by Gears 5? Etc, etc. Oh well. The game is good and one of MS' best games this year.
You can't really quantify it in those terms. It's more along the lines of Netflix. New content needs to attract new subscribers and keep existing ones happy. The only thing that really matters is if they're making an overall profit.
I'd be interested to know how many people signed up for Gamepass in the few days before and after launch of Gears. I can't picture MS giving us that info though.
So, Gears has set the standard. From here on out, we can compare big MS Studios games to this. In a few years, we may have enough info to know if 3 million opening weekend players is impressive.
These promotional blurbs really don't have much meaning anymore since they're comparing apples and cabbages. You have to get a physicist to analyze the context before you can even begin to put it in perspective.
3m people played Gears 5.. not that hard to understand.
The devil's in the detail that's why I don't like it when all we hear is player numbers be used to proclaim record breaking success and I include Sony in that , I don't mind the numbers being extolled at times. but in the case of proclaiming record openings it should be along side the sales numbers , that way we retain some historical perspective and going forward we can then get a better sense of how the retail - digital and sub figures are tracking against each over and lok for how it impacts sales on an overall and game by game basis.
There's no way MS would release numbers like that though. Going forward, sales for MS Studios titles are never going to be impressive. Over time, as more people adapt to the subscription model, individual game sales will become lower and lower. No company is going to release numbers in public statements that are declining.
The important numbers now, and the ones that should get larger, and therefore are appealing to the PR department to release, are active players, subscribers, and maybe some other metrics that demonstrate player engagement. Shit's changed for MS.
Can we get some raw numbers to actually put this statement into perspective? I mean, Spider Man, God of War, and Uncharted 4 have all sold 13, 11, and 17 million respectively. I’d rather be hearing numbers like that from MS.
I can't be too sure with Halo 5 and Gears 4, but I think Forza Horizon 4 is the only title to break 10 million players. But we're never going to see actual sales data from them.
You cannot get raw numbers anymore, how do you count GamePass sales with Gears 5? They said 3m people played it on launch weekend. What more do you want?
It also set the record for the worst opening sales for the Gears franchise. Just saying... :P
I would expect that to be the case for the next Halo, Forza, Forza Horizon, and just about anything else. Microsoft is no longer primarily in the business of selling software. They are now selling subscriptions.
True but apparently they're still in the business of hiding actual sales behind PR spin lol
In a weird way Microsoft might actually be able to see some positives through that lmao, sure it means it didn't sell as much at retail (why pay $60 when you can pay $2) but vice versa it means most people subbed to Game Pass to play it, which is exactly what they primarily want; getting people into a Game Pass subscription. Means that, for this title at least, so far it's working.
Physical sales yes. But you are smart enough to know sales branch off in many directions like digital and GamePass which dont count in sales numbers.
I know they're still making money outside of physical copies. I just find the PR spin annoying.
Where is the spin? They said 3m people have played Gears 5 on the weekend. Thats the only true way to read the success of the game with MS's new gaming method. You prefer them to say we sold 500k units? you can imagine the feedback from the trolls with those figures.
Maybe spin is the wrong word but they're clearly trying to use PR to pull attention from the game's poor sales.
How do we know its selling poorly? Physical sales dont matter to an online digital and service game. Judging by the boost in GamePass subs and popularity, id say the game is doing quite well.
How do we know there was a boost in GamePass subs? The vast majority of those 3 million players might have already had GamePass. We would know if Microsoft would release some concrete numbers, but that ain't gonna happen.
A few more years and those games on xbl and game pass will contain ads.
God I hope not. What a dark future for gaming if your statement holds true.
Trust me that will happen sooner than you think. The games will be interrupted to show ads and to remove ads you will have to buy XBL premium
And most of those gamers got to play it thanks to a low priced promo. Gears 3 sales were 20x it in the UK. I wouldn't be surprised if it's like that around the globe. Gamer Pass isn't going to bring in the kind of money MS wants when all of those promo period ends.
Game Pass will bring in more money long term. Also better to have people play a great game than not. This opens the opportunity for future sales and is self marketing there own product. Its actually genius.
Game Pass will bring in more money long term. Also better to have people play a great game than not. This opens the opportunity for future sales and is self marketing there own product. Its actually genius.
Gears 5 needs to do well and i am glad it is. By being successful will allow The Coalition and MS to continue to support these types of games with high end budgets. I also love how it gets people in a twist because they wont announce physical sales.
In fairness, we are on a site that is (at least used to be) centered around sales numbers.
But, yeah, people are going to have to get used to the new ways of doing things. Humans are resistant to change. So, it may take a little while before everyone can accept that sales numbers of a given game just aren't what MS is chasing anymore.
I think some just don't like Microsoft's success and find ways to downplay this.
@VAMatt yes, we are on a sales site however sales are ever only used to bash on another product. Ask yourself this, what good do sales do aside from up playing and down playing something? If you been on this site for awhile you will only notice sales have a negative affect on what people like. Besides it shouldn't matter to the general public only unless you are a share holder or run a buisness where this affects.
This is a great showing from gears 5 and game pass. The downplay is astounding in some comments here. Give me a break. Activity is a good thing for their service, incase you didnt know ( not you, azz) and 3 million players is obviously good, and obviously because gears 5 is a bad ass game. Games services are the future. Like it or not. I've been a long time lurker, and I remember seeing alot of people play up sonys game service big time. What's the difference? The numbers are what they are. Anything more than that is just someone trying to appease themselves. Do you know how many were using promos? No? Then stop using that because you have no idea. Even if it were 100% using a promo.... a percentage of those will stay on..... and that equals... growth. Give it up. Theres just no way to downplay this.
This is a great showing from gears 5 and game pass. The downplay is astounding in some comments here. Give me a break. Activity is a good thing for their service, incase you didnt know ( not you, azz) and 3 million players is obviously good, and obviously because gears 5 is a bad ass game. Games services are the future. Like it or not. I've been a long time lurker, and I remember seeing alot of people play up sonys game service big time. What's the difference? The numbers are what they are. Anything more than that is just someone trying to appease themselves. Do you know how many were using promos? No? Then stop using that because you have no idea. Even if it were 100% using a promo.... a percentage of those will stay on..... and that equals... growth. Give it up. Theres just no way to downplay this.
My comment wasnt directed at anyone in azz's comment thread... only toward the down players. Lol
My comment wasnt directed at anyone in azz's comment thread... only toward the down players. Lol
My comment wasnt directed at anyone in azz's comment thread... only toward the down players. Lol
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