The Coalition is giving every Gears of War: E-Day player a free multiplayer character to mark the franchise’s 20th anniversary, and says its next season starts on December 1. The announcement comes as the Xbox Game Studios title, which launched on October 6, faces questions about sales and cost.
In a post on Xbox Wire dated November 6, Coalition studio brand director Nicole Fawcette wrote that every player can claim RAAM as a free multiplayer character by logging in on November 7, the anniversary of the original game’s launch on Xbox 360. A two-week anniversary event is running now, with a Versus mode called Guardian, where only one leader survives, and a Horde Siege mode called For the Queen, where the supply cache is disabled and squads rely on their loadouts. Pure Xbox noted that Guardian first appeared in Gears of War 2.
Season 2, titled Legacy, starts on December 1. The Coalition says it will bring back maps, modes and multiplayer skins from across the franchise’s history and reimagine some characters. One example is a “Solemn Memories Dom” skin based on the suit Dominic Santiago wears in a well-known photograph from Gears of War 2. Pure Xbox reported that Season 1 ends at the end of November.
The question of performance
Gears of War: E-Day is set 14 years before the first game and rebuilds the series in Unreal Engine 5. It launched on Xbox Series X|S, PC and Steam on October 6, after early access began on October 1, and is available through Game Pass.
Microsoft hasn’t released sales figures. GameRant reported on November 3 that estimates put sales at just over 400,000 copies across PC and Xbox, with about 1.7 million players accessing it through Game Pass, and called that performance underwhelming. Those numbers are unconfirmed estimates.
Windows Central‘s Jez Corden wrote on November 2 that Microsoft’s auditors have attributed upwards of $500 million to The Coalition across Gears 5 and E-Day. He argued that the figure oversimplifies how that money was spread, since the studio also supported other Unreal Engine games. He said he had not heard that Xbox plans to close the studio. Eastern Herald has not independently verified any of the sales or budget figures.
