Well, I bought a copy (physical one too!).

But yeah, while those numbers are just rumours as of now, it was common sense that Game Pass cannibalizes sales. It's also why I believe the rumors a few weeks ago that Game Pass day one games would be removed in 2027. It happened with CoD, and it'll happen with the bigger AAA games from Xbox soon enough. I think the new leadership are waiting for GP numbers to stabilize and get back to the number they had prior to the price increase where they lost millions of subscribers.

Alinea estimates have been proven quite inaccurate. I wouldn't put much weight behind those numbers. Not saying they are way off, but wait for official numbers. 

Gears has never performed well on Steam, plus day one Gen Pass. E- Day has so far peaked at 31,517 concurrent players on Steam. By far the best for a Gears game in Steam. Gears 5 peaked at 10,196. So E-Day has tripled the previous record.

Yeah, Gears has not really a fanbase on Steam/PC and was always dead there. Not saying that MS would probably wish to see more people buying it with this "restart" but it's what it is.

Saying that, it's also not the time anymore where these kind of games are what people buy the most. Gears will probably never be as big as it was on Xbox 360 again. Times have changed and if the next Gears will be the last then it's also not the end of the world.

Weird thing is, that it sells here; it is basically the first Xbox physical game available since maybe the last sports game...

Anyway:

RUMOR | Xbox's missing 'Anime Games' may have been the result of a 'One-Man Power Trip' according to Jez Corden
“I've been speaking to a lot of figures, past and present, about why certain games have been banned on Xbox. There's a conspiracy theory among fans of a particular genre of games, notably anime-style dating simulations, because Microsoft has had this almost notorious app gap. PlayStation has these games, Nintendo has them, and Steam has them, but Xbox doesn't.”

“The community has had this conspiracy theory that Microsoft was blocking these games. I actually found out that this probably isn't as conspiratorial as some people might expect. Apparently, there was somebody at Xbox who hated anime-style games and had previously been declining them. This is something I've heard, so I took it with a pinch of salt because it's just industry rumour.” “But I think times have changed. Leadership has changed hands, and some of those games that were previously blocked have now mysteriously started getting approved. So, yeah, times have definitely changed.” “And I think you said it was a one-man power trip. It sounds like it was, yeah.”

Mat never really commented about the numbers.
However if they were wildly wrong/incorrect... I feel like he would have.

Instead he took it upon himself to point out that people "playing it for free, via game-pass" aren't actually playing it for free.
They have a subscription they paid to be allowed to do so. 

So while so far, it might only have made like ~40m in revenue, from sales/early access upgrades.... that isn't the full picture.
There have been ~1.7m players in total as well (majority of which, paid a subscription fee).


Also in my opinion.... even if it fails to recoup the speculated ~400m costs to develop..... that stuff happens.
Look at how many games Playstation had that totally flopped as well (basically all their live service games).
At least Gears, is mostly well received by everyone (even if a few think the girl-boss out of control, thing is overdone as basically every resent game does it).

I'm not discounting Alinea completely, but compared to the last Xbox game he covered, I just find it hard to see how the numbers make sense.

So for Halo Campaign Evolved, Xbox was the lead platform for sale, and sold a decent 1.2 million soon after launch (711k without PS5). Halo Campaign Evolved wasn't that well received by fans, it was a remake and not an original new game, was incomplete with no multiplayer, it is also in Game Pass... and yet it just does way better that Gears E Day according to him.

From audience and critic reception, Steam charts, etc. I find that hard to believe.

Halo is a much more popular title.
Their games typically do 10-14m+ sales lifetime.
While Gears titles are usually like in the ~5m range.

Without knowing the exact costs associated with Gamepass or Gears E-Day development, it is impossible for any of us, industry analyst or layman, to ever know if it's doing well enough to be considered a success. We would need:

1. The exact budget figure for the Gears E-Day itself, development and marketing, and not including costs associated with The Coalition making toolsets multiple 1st and 2nd party games will benefit from (because those costs would be spread out over the budgets for multiple upcoming games that use the toolsets), or the costs of assisting other Xbox studios with development the last 7 years since Gears 5 released
2. An exact number of current Gamepass subscribers and a breakdown of how many subs are on each price tier, PC, Essential, Premium, and Ultimate, in order to work out the monthly revenue of Gamepass, and especially the revenue from the PC and Ultimate tiers, which are the only tiers with day one 1st and 2nd party releases now
3. An exact figure for the upkeep of running Gamepass, server electricity costs and such, pay for employees in the Gamepass division, in order to subtract costs from the yearly revenue figure
4. A figure for how much money Xbox spends on 3rd party Gamepass deals each year, to subtract those costs from the Gamepass revenue figure.
5. An internal Xbox estimate of how many more copies of Gears E-Day Xbox believes they would have sold if there was no day one Gamepass Ultimate or PC Gamepass release
6. How many new subscribers Gears E-Day drew to PC Gamepass and Gamepass Ultimate, and how many months they stay subbed into the future

It's nowhere near as cut and dry to determine a games success on a subscription model than it is on a purely sales model, because there are so many factors.

Tom Henderson says he has heard insiders claim "upwards of 400m dollars" for it's development.
Does it really matter if it is 300m or 380m?

While we don't have a break down, of the gamepass user base that played it... or how much they are subscribed for... we do roughly know it is ~1.7m users out of a pool of say 20m ish total gamepass users.  We know that around ~17% of those (1.7m) played less than 1 hour, and roughly ~54% played less than 5 hours total (of gears E-day).  Alot of gamepass users install something, play it abit, and uninstall aftewards.  Xbox avg playtime is alot lower than Steam users that bought the game.

I think I remember reading that how gamepass deals with the money it hands out, is based on users and playtime, for each title.
So a game that has a wildly large pool of gamepass players, playing it for along time, will get the biggest cut of the pie.

So yes, we won't ever have 100% down to the last cent, accuracy....

If sales/dlc(early access) make up ~$37m revenue (before some steam cuts, and taxes ect).... we do know that is a far ways off from "upwards of 400m dollars".

We also know, that most games, from sales, make like ~30-70% of their total revenue from like the first week of sales.

So lets say down the line, gears E-Day makes ~100m total from sales.

The question becomes will Gamepass cover the remaining 200-300m in costs?

I think this game ends up losing money.
Which again, is not that rare. Look at playstation (and all its live service attempts).... I don't even think Wolverine will make back it's costs either.

I do think Gears E-Day is probably the tipping point for whatever Asha decides to do moving forward about the Gamepass situation, I think if it was successful in terms of revenue + new Gamepass users and such, she will continue on with day one releases on the Ultimate tier at least (continuing on with them on PC Gamepass feels less likely, $14 a month for even 2 months is alot less than a $70 purchase of a game). If Gears wasn't successful enough, I think they probably scale back Ultimate 1st and 2nd party additions to like 3-6 months after release instead of day one, which is still a selling point over Premium tier (1st and 2nd party games added 12 months after release). I think PC Gamepass will either raise in price some or end up with Gamepass premium parity, 12 months after release for 1st and 2nd party games.