CoDexData

Gears of War E-Day briefly overtook Modern Warfare 4's Steam pre-orders (@alineaanalytics estimates). For the past couple of months, Modern Warfare 4 and E-Day have been shifting pre-order copies sold on Steam, and MW4 was comfortably leading for a while, until E-Day had its first beta, which ran between August 6 and 10 exclusively for those who pre-ordered. As you can see in the image I've added here, the effect the E-Day beta had on Steam copies sold was quick: - Before and during the beta, E-Day sold over 12K copies a day (versus MW4’s steadier 1.5K-ish) - E-Day then overtook MW4 on August 7 it overtook Modern Warfare 4 outright for about eight days. - But E-Day’s sales halted as soon as the beta ended, at just 2.3K more copies sold across the following week – even though there was an open beta last weekend (that beta attracted another 400K players on Xbox by the way, bringing the total across the betas to 1.6M). The takeaway here, I reckon, is that the E-Day beta was a sugar rush for those probably already wanting to buy it eventually. It just pulled those purchase forward. And the momentum ended as soon as the pre-order-only beta did. Meanwhile MW4 quickened its steady climb, thanks to a first-look trailer on 14 August (revealing that campaign mission in the beta) as well as increasing hype for its preorder-only beta. MW4 retook the lead on 16 August and detonated, adding 6K+ copies in one day on 17 August. Now that MW4’s marketing cycle is kicking off in earnest, its sales across platforms will only continue to grow. MW4’s early beta for digital pre-order folks will no doubt drive sales on Steam, which we'll be covering in an upcoming edition of the newsletter on Substack.