• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

How did Gears of War 4 sell?

jelly

Member
Any official numbers yet?

I can only find it was second behind FIFA 17 in the first week UK sales which doesn't sound too shabby.

I was thinking long term would a series that isn't selling well warrant a dedicated studio that Microsoft seem to like for tent pole franchises. Early days of course.
 
I think the UK launch was <95k, so retail sales are in the ballpark of Gears 1 and Judgement in the Xbone's second biggest territory. Hard to see it doing notably better (relatively) in North America and I'd guess it was a flub elsewhere.

Edit - in before "but digital".
 
I think the UK launch was <95k, so retail sales are in the ballpark of Gears 1 and Judgement in the Xbone's second biggest territory. Hard to see it doing notably better (relatively) in North America and I'd guess it was a flub elsewhere.

Edit - in before "but digital".

UK numbers were.

1st week < 83,000
2nd week < 19,900 / 102,900 (-76%)
3rd week > 12,800 / 115,700
 
US numbers were a little below Judgement.

I doubt Gears is in trouble or has a huge amount of money lavished on it, just not doing as well 1-3 which was expected although some on here thought it was going to outsell Halo and be Mircosofts big ip but its light years away from Gears 2-3 sales even.

I'm expecting two more games and it to be used for Scorpio.
 
Granted i haven't finished Gears 4 yet, but I'm on act 5 of the campaign and despite the opening levels with the robots being AWFUL, the majority of the game has been excellent. Id like to see the series continue.
 

Matt

Member
US numbers were a little below Judgement.

I doubt Gears is in trouble or has a huge amount of money lavished on it, just not doing as well 1-3 which was expected although some on here thought it was going to outsell Halo and be Mircosofts big ip but its light years away from Gears 2-3 sales even.
They spent a ton on Gears. Bought the IP and has a whole studio (in an expensive city) dedicated to it.
 
well other than the costs of setting up a studio for it and probably 50-100 million dollars in buying the IP from epic.

Well over the course of a few games it'll be alright. What I'm saying is Microsoft aren't going to stop making Gears and aren't going to do what Epic games said the ip needed.
 
I can't believe these numbers. I was thinking, wait, NMS did better than Gears 4 in the UK?

[Week 32, 2016] 01 (NE) NO MAN'S SKY (SONY COMPUTER ENT.) ~ 110,000 / NEW
[Week 33, 2016] 02 (01) NO MAN'S SKY (SONY COMPUTER ENT.) ~ 20,900 / 130,900 (-81%)
[Week 34, 2016] 03 (02) NO MAN'S SKY (SONY COMPUTER ENT.) ~ 10,900 / 141,800 (-48%)

Margin of error ±6%

Wow.
 
Well the problem with that is if the numbers keep going down, they won't

Sure. They could change things in the next game and improve. I'd be weary of putting $150m into a Gears 5 but maybe MS will think lets take a huge risk and go big or go home. It'll be incredibly hard to get Gears 2-3 type sales, anything is possible but I think MS has bought the ip for long term reasons, and merchandise plus they can once set up have a decent ip every two years.
 

jdmonmou

Member
So I thought one of the goals of Microsoft's Play Anywhere strategy was to sell more copies of their 1st party exclusives since not that many people had an Xbox One. Problem is the Windows Store is garbage. They should release Gears of War on Steam like they did Quantum Break to make as much money as they can.
 

Kayant

Member
They spent a ton on Gears. Bought the IP and has a whole studio (in an expensive city) dedicated to it.
Yh plus that launch party with Nadella satya they obviously expecting big things from it. I bet it didn't met their expectations.
 

Chris1

Member
It didn't sell 1.5 million copies digitally.

There is a reason it went on sale immediately and MS is running a commercial spots advertising that it's $20 off.

Every game goes on sale soon after these days, especially around the holiday. I don't think that's indicative of sales. Look at Battlefront and Battlefield 1 for example. Has any recently released game not gone on sale for a decently sized discount actually?

But yeah, sales weren't great. Good enough to fund a sequel (as if there was any chance of that not happening :p) but far from its hayday.
 
The MP is really fun, about on par with GoW3. And the campaign is rally well done too, it is on a smaller scale similar to the 1st Gears game and I really prefer that compared to the epics of the other games to be honest.
 

RibMan

Member
The numbers were less than Judgment's, so I believe that makes Gears 4 the worst selling entry to date. Long-term, I think the Gears purchase + studio shift (from Shangheist to Gears) will turn out to be a poor decision. Gears 4 numbers are lower than the numbers for a lot of new IP's this gen, and the franchise is getting older and not younger. Investing in a new IP is much riskier, but I think that's the call Microsoft should have made: Shangheist > Gears.
 

fr0st

Banned
Of topic question but can you still get gears 1-3 if you got the game from a bundle? I have the regular edition.
 

Zedox

Member
So I thought one of the goals of Microsoft's Play Anywhere strategy was to sell more copies of their 1st party exclusives since not that many people had an Xbox One. Problem is the Windows Store is garbage. They should release Gears of War on Steam like they did Quantum Break to make as much money as they can.

Uhm, yea...and those numbers don't reflect those sales. Promoting digital sales wouldn't improve physical sales...thats backwards logic.
 
do we know the numbers for Halo 5 by now?
iirc it had the weakest launch since the first Halo?

i was surprised to see the two Big IPs from MS declining that much.

Wonder how GT Sport will do
 
do we know the numbers for Halo 5 by now?
iirc it had the weakest launch since the first Halo?

i was surprised to see the two Big IPs from MS declining that much.

Wonder how GT Sport will do

Considering what they changed, GT Sport will end up like Street Fighter V.
 

Lister

Banned
If it wasn't bundled with GPUs I could imagine it selling....lol on PC.

I got it for free with my GTX 1080 :)

I was super impressed witht he quality fo the port. Probaly the best benchmarking tool and options menu in a multi-platform game. Looks beautiful and runs like a dream.

But... I never played Gears beyond the first title way back when, since Microsoft turned it into an exclusive.. so I just wasn't really interested. Never got past the intro level in the campaign. never tried multi-player.
 

Chris1

Member
Halo 4 - 3.2 million
Halo 5 - 935k

To be fair Halo 4 released at the start of the month vs Halo 5 right at the end. IIRC Halo 5 charted in November aswell, so it probably did about 1.5M in the same timeframe as Halo 4 did 3.2M. But yeah, massive drop off. That's what happens when you release one completely broken game and another most people didn't like just before it.

Edit: That's NPD. For UK Halo 5 did 150k. Can't remember how much Halo 4 did but it was a huge drop.
 

Ein Bear

Member
When comparing sales of any major franchise that spans multiple console generations, I think its important to remember that the userbases for both consoles were basically reset three years ago. I'd be curious to know what Microsoft's internal expectations were, as I recall the Epic guys saying a major factor in them not pursuing a GoW4 themselves was due to the hardware transition making it impossible to outsell 3. The Xbox One just doesn't have the userbase that the 360 had by the time Gears 3 rolled around to support those kinds of numbers.

Halo 5 had even less chance of doing Halo 4 numbers incidentally. 4 was released on a console that had been on the market for seven years, whilst the Bone was only on it's second year when Halo 5 came out.
 

black070

Member
When comparing sales of any major franchise that spans multiple console generations, I think its important to remember that the userbases for both consoles were basically reset three years ago. I'd be curious to know what Microsoft's internal expectations were, as I recall the Epic guys saying a major factor in them not pursuing a GoW4 themselves was due to the hardware transition making it impossible to outsell 3. The Xbox One just doesn't have the userbase that the 360 had by the time Gears 3 rolled around to support those kinds of numbers.

Halo 5 had even less chance of doing Halo 4 numbers incidentally. 4 was released on a console that had been on the market for seven years, whilst the Bone was only on it's second year when Halo 5 came out.

Uncharted 4, inFamous Second Son and Ratchet & Clank were all series high launches despite a lower install base.
 
Top Bottom