Gears of War: E-Day sold 168,000 copies on Steam but Xbox Game Pass players generated 130% more revenue

We recently reported that Gears of War: E-Day didn’t have the best launch week on Steam, but according to Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics, Steam doesn’t even account for half of the game’s revenue or owner base. The analytics company estimates that Gears of War: E-Day has sold around 230,000 copies since launch, with around 168,000 coming from Steam and 62,000 of those from Xbox. Despite this, Xbox players still accounted for nearly three-quarters of the game’s $37 million in revenue.

The big differentiator here is that 1.7 million players played E-Day through an Xbox Game Pass subscription and 722,000 subscribers paid an additional $30 for the Premium Edition Game Pass upgrade, which gave them early access to the game. The bottom line is that, while few players actually purchased Gears of War: E-Day, Xbox generated an estimated $26 million in revenue, where Steam only raked in $11 million dollars.