Developer The Coalition is celebrating 20 years of the Gears of War franchise and has released a new trailer that takes us through the cover shooter’s epic story moments. The trailer, which you can check out below, clocks in at three and a half minutes in length, and features everything from Marcus Fenix deciding to pick up the Lancer against the Locust threat, to the introduction of characters like Cole and Baird.
Along with some of the more serious story moments, like when the Hammer of God is deployed to take out massive Locust threats, there are also a few other moments that might remind players of comedic scenes from the original trilogy, like the saga of the Carmine family. We eventually move over to the newer story that has been told with Gears of War 4 and Gears 5, which featured an entirely new cast of characters.
The most recent entry, Gears of War: E-Day, was released on PC and Xbox Series X/S last month, and interestingly enough, involves some of the very first moments that happen in the larger lore of the franchise. As its name implies, its plot revolves around Emergence Day itself, with players once more taking on the role of Marcus Fenix and his partner Dom as they fight for survival during the first day of the Locust War. Set roughly 14 years before the events of the first Gears of War, we also get to see the friendship between Marcus and Dom forming, and how it would evolve over the course of the franchise.
While neither The Coalition nor Xbox has confirmed how well the title has done since its release, reports have indicated that it had sold more than 400,000 units across Xbox and Steam as of the end of October. This has raised many questions about the title’s commercial performance, especially since it followed reports that it was developed with a budget of $500 million. The fact that Xbox decided to make it an exclusive release and didn’t bring it to PS5 may have also resulted in the loss of several sales.
According to Circana’s Mat Piscatella, the exclusivity decision hasn’t ended up offering any tangible benefits to Xbox, especially when compared to the performance of Marvel’s Wolverine, which was released exclusively on PS5. He noted that the latter even managed to do well in terms of accessories.
“If you look at the weekly sales cadence of accessories and hardware, the Wolverine DualSense was the bestselling accessory of the month. The [console] bundle sold out. There weren’t huge quantities, but that really helped boost PlayStation 5 sales that particular week.
“In terms of an old-school, ‘here’s an exclusive game and we’re going to sell some consoles and some accessories with it,’ I think it’s about as good as you could hope from an IP that isn’t the level of Spider-Man.”
As for the reported $500 million budget, reports have come out since noting that the money was payment for a host of other projects, which also included The Coalition’s work on Unreal Engine.
