How much does a true console exclusive cost to make today? If recent reports are to be believed, Gears of War: E-Day had a production cost $500 million, but there’s more to that figure than just a single game.
That’s according to Windows Central writer Jez Corden, who says he spoke with multiple sources familiar with the story behind the half-billion dollars paid over several years to The Coalition while it was working on Gears of War: E-Day. The studio emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic as a Swiss Army Knife developer that assisted not only on several Xbox games, but also worked on the technology powering them.
As Corden explained, The Coalition worked with Epic Games on the oThe Matrix Awakens and Alpha Point tech demos for Unreal Engine 5 demonstrations, and used that knowledge to help other developers in the Xbox Games Studio portfolio. The Coalition reportedly worked for over 18 months on a prototype game that was eventually canceled, assisted on Avowed, Hellblade 2, Clockwork Revolution, State of Decay 3, Grounded, and Grounded 2, and even contributed to the upcoming StarCraft at Blizzard.
Once Mike Crump was appointed studio head, development on Gears of War: E-Day reportedly kicked into full gear. That makes for a busy developer, and one that brings a lot of institutional knowledge to Xbox with its work on Unreal Engine 5, which is one of the most popular engines for video game development. “I can’t help but feel like the ‘$500 million’ figure being shared around internally is being used to justify potential cuts, layoffs, or worse, a studio closure targeting The Coalition. Perhaps to ‘soften the blowback,’ should Microsoft target the studio. For what it’s worth, I’ve not heard that Xbox is planning to close The Coalition,” Corden added.
Gears of War: E-Day has reportedly not sold well either, but this can be attributed to various factors. It was only released for PC and Xbox Series X|S, is also available through Xbox Game Pass, and it happened to launch during an exceptionally busy time, as the last couple of months have been loaded with several major game releases, creating a lot of competition for a person’s attention and money.
Circana analyst Mat Piscatella recently commented on the game, saying that making Gears of War: E-Day exclusive to Xbox “hasn’t made any difference” in terms of selling more Xbox consoles.
