Gears selling like it's supposed to

Selling 2 million games in one months time is not to be expected by anyone for any reason. This only happens a few times in the life of a console and is quite an achievement for the short amount of time it's all gone down.

There's no doubt that Halo 3 will probably sell 3 million copies on day one as Halo 2 accomplished as much last go around.

yup, i'm one of the suckers who bought this game... actually i do enjoy it, but i wish i had more time to play. as soon as i can figure out this whole lag thing on the internet, i may actually play well on multiplayer.

I think you're missing one huge point. MS and Epic made sure it was a damn good game! And that is why this game has serious legs and will continue to sell well for some time. The release proved that the marketing/hype/etc. wasn't just smoke and mirrors but actually an indication of the high quality of the game.

Um, Gears of War is going to be on PC too. Just wait for it.

Gears of War was a system seller for me. Read all the reviews about it and coughed up the dollars for it. I don't regret it one bit. I love this game.

"Don't you ever get tired?"
"Hell to the no."

Congratulations to Epic and Msoft. A game well worth 60 bucks. I am a satisfied customer and expect a sequel (2008???).

#3 Lag issues - I do see ur point that the game "may" have lag but it is not as crack up to be. I believe it depends on who you are playing with and let me elavorate on this. I have a friend that when he is the host I have lag (not extreme lag) but lag enough that the opposite team can kill me with fewer shots than I. But, when I am the host or other friends we are lag free. Overall, I believe the majority of the players are having a "good" or "perfect" lag-free games.

Crossing fingers that the rumor going around that the marketplace/patch would be coming in Xmas Eve/Day would come true.

Gamertag: HELL4ME2U (bunch of Latinos in my friend's list, are u a Latino hit me a friend request)

I love this game, but you have to admit it was like an oasis. When there's hardly anything else to play, of course people are going to jump on the game of this magnitude. Starve a man and offer him a steak.

:) I love GoW

So when a team that is a heavy favor to win, wins the super-bowl, then it's not a big deal?

"The fastest-selling Xbox-exclusive ever (Halo 2's coming to PC, remember?)"

That's my problem. I recognize that Microsoft wants to push it's Games for Windows line, but as an Xbox 360 owner, I wonder if it's worth it if they keep porting games to PC. Sure, Gears of War may be an Xbox 360 exclusive for over a year but if they put it out on PC eventually, it still takes away from the need to own an Xbox 360. The other highest rated Xbox 360 game of the year, Elder Scrolls IV, was $10 cheaper and looked better on a nice PC. I know a lot of you are saying that a nice PC costs thousands of dollars, and I myself do not have the kind of computer that would run a game like Elder Scrolls IV or Prey better than an Xbox 360. But a lot of people do, and once Vista launches there will be fewer and fewer Xbox 360 exclusives as Microsoft pushes Live Anywhere. I'm really looking forward to titles like Bioshock and Alan Wake, but if I had a nice setup why would I pay $60 for these games, when the same title is $50 on PC? I feel like MS is shooting themselves in the foot here.

Way to minimize Gears' accomplishments, Joystiq! To be honest, I expected it to sell more, quicker....not because of marketing hype but because it's one of the funnest games I've ever played....everyone in the world should be buying this game for everyone else!!! Sky's the limit on this one for Epic.

I think a fair comparison would be to compare how Halo 1 sold...the conditions are about the same...debut of an original IP, released 1 year into an established install base. Where are those numbers??

*Tremendous* game, well worth the money :) Congrats to Epic and MS. I think Gears will be a MP hit for a loooong time if they can get a patch out soon to fix up some issues like grenade tagging and microphone problems.

gears of war is over for me. I played 2 hours a day + for the past month in multiplayer. Im now bored with it. This is no accomplishment. Halo 2 lasted me 1.5 years before I got bored with it (and starcraft lasted me 3 years :) )

The point here is GOW seems like a real shortcomming on the multiplayer front. The ranking system is terrible (high ranked players are not skilled players, only those who play 24/7 since there is no way to lose rank, only gain). Also, multiplayer does get limiting with only 4v4 and 1 game mode. They need some CTF in there, Deathmatch and other game types. Bigger maps with up to 16 players could not hurt either. I mean I had 4 friends online the other day, and we couldent even play all on the same team because you cannot have 5 players per team.

The 1 player mode for me in this game was semi fun. Nothing I would pay for, but I know other people would. I generally dont buy any FPS for a 1 player mode because that is just beaten in less then a day. I really bought this game because all my friends wanted me to so I could play on linve with them.

If a GOW 2 comes out, they are gonna need to seriously beef up the multiplayer modes, levels, options if they want me to buy the game again because if its the same as this one, Im not getting it. I mean GOW does have fun multiplayer, they just didnt spend enough time making it. Too much focus on the 1 player of the game.

Um, wow. 2 million copies in a month is really amazing. It's like you guys think that just because a company puts their money behind something that it automatically should sell 4 bazillion in two seconds. Retail doesn't work that way kiddies. This is truly impressive.

iocomposer..

halo 1 was an xbox launch game...so it had zero install-base

gears is selling like its supposed to because gears plays like its supposed to.

hype + advertising != 2m units, unless it truely is a solid product.

Eh, it was cool the first few weeks. Then multiplayer turned into a gigantic shotgun (and only shotgun) fest. No point in playing as you will lose if you use any other gun, and it's no fun without some variation...

As long as they add some new gameplay elements in the next 3 months, and new maps in the next 6 months, this game will have a multi-year lifespan.

It's a little slim on the multiplayer side right now, but they can fix that. The single player was decent (just about done Insane now, which is nearly a 20 hour campaign). The multiplayer rocks but is just too shallow for now.

A great game deserves great sales and this got it, makes a change from the sales going to all the sims and NFS spin offs!

And I've played singleplayer 3 times (and want more) and am constantly playing multiplayer (ranked and player matches) it's just too addictive. More add on maps (free) are coming soon for gears to extend it and possibly some tweaks/new gametype so don't give up on it yet.

to JS Beckerist:

Really? Maybe it depends on who you play with, but my friends and I rarely use the shotgun, its range and rate of fire are so weak. With the shotgun you either have to charge in close or hide-and-pounce. If your team is working together, neither of those strategies is terriblely effective.

We'll never see this installment of gears with 16 player multiplayer. A dirty little secret of the game is that currently, the engine can't really handle more than 12 avatars on screen at once. Before you jump to conclusions about this, think about the campaign, and remember that you will virtually never fight more than 6 enemies at once, save for set piece levels, like the area immediately following the driving sequence. Downed enemies will stay on the ground until the number of onscreen enemies surpasses 4 or 5, and then they'll disappear. This could very well be due to texture memory considerations, but again, play through it and actually pay attention, and I think you'll notice it too. I still thought it was a phenomenal experience, but in this case I think a sacrifice was made to keep the singleplayer graphics in multiplayer as opposed to adding larger conflicts. Once epic works more on the engine and gets it even more optimized for the system, then I think we'll get a Gears with more players in a match.

http://www.eat-sleep-game.com

I think it should go by precent. That's less than 50% of the of Xbox owns, yet 87% of Wii owners bought Zelda.

WWWWWiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

"With all the hype and marketing that's gone into Gears -- and the headstart Microsoft has had on cultivating an Xbox 360 install base -- this game had best be the fastest-selling title of its generation this year."

Hm, seeing as how everyone walked took Zelda away with their Wii, I'd imagine that it's close. Might have been able to take the lead if Nintendo could have met demand.

Yeah, when a company puts a ton of marketing and hype behind a game it is automatically going to sell well.

I mean look at Atari and ET...

Met demand? You expected nintendo to have more than 2mil wiis at launch?

I personally think 4 vs 4 is plenty. I never thought having 16 players in a BTB on Halo 2 was any fun because how are you suppose to work as a team or get any kills with that many people playing?? 8 players let's you coordinate and work together and it feels more like being on a team rather than just playing with people that don't communicate or work together online.

As far as the amount of ememies on screen at once on single player... again (depending on what difficulty level you are playing on) it's really more than enough because at times it's overwhelming having to hide behind a wall and fend from all directions. The last thing I would want to see are more enemies coming at me. In my personal opinion.. I think the game is balanced.

Worth every penny. Kudos to Epic and M$ on this one.

Gears of War has quickly become my readers favorite game and as well as mine. Epic Games truly did a job well done, and I believe that word of mouth has been the main contributor to their game's success. Which in my book, means they did a helluva job in making their customers happy. And let's not forget the anticipated DLC. It's going to be FREE....

It really is a pretty incredible game. Fun as hell.

I play online a lot, and haven't really noticed the shotgun dominating really. It's situational like any other weapon. I get killed by sniper rifle, chainsaw, regular machine gun, pistol - the works. Even the Hammer of Dawn :)

I like 4 on 4. Games fill up quickly and the teams are just the right size, rounds aren't overly long after you die. It's a nice middle ground.

Co-op multiplayer (xbox live) on hardcore was an utter blast, by the way.

Anyone who thinks this game could work with 16 players is blind.

Yes, they got a heck a winner for their 1 billion dollar investment [yes, folks- 1 BILLION $$$!]

"I think it should go by precent. That's less than 50% of the of Xbox owns, yet 87% of Wii owners bought Zelda.

WWWWWiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"

Posted at 2:31PM on Dec 15th 2006 by David4 0 stars



Other factors must be taken into consideraton a well. The Wii (I still hate typing that) had less than 20 titles to choose from at the time Zelda released, the 360 had 5-7 times that number of titles at the time Gears launched. Gears was also a NEW IP while Zelda has had advertisement and word of mouth since the days of NES. One could also argue that in the US, Zelda was really about the only "great" game to purchase for the Wii. In fact, I'm surprised that not EVERYONE who purchased a Wii didn't pick up Zelda.

Point being, Gears is one helluva fun game. Multiplayer needs some polish to have legs like Halo, but overall I enjoyed the campaign MORE than Halo or any other shooter (1st person or 3rd) I've played on PC or console. Give credit where credit is due.

Playing through Gears on Insane with a friend via co-op was hands down one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life. We've been playing games together since Combat on the 2600, and this was truly awesome.

Multiplayer is starting to get old, but the promise of a few more 100 kill achievements keeps me coming back. I doubt I'll stick around for the 10,000 kill award (currently around 1,500).

There's still enough to entertain until Lost Planet comes out, then I'll wait until Gears 2 to re-visit Marcus and company.

I really enjoyed this game when it came out. But, I have to say it got old real quick. The single player was kinda short, and the multiplayer just doesn't have the staying power like some of my other favorites do.

"But really, achievement that this is, would anything less be acceptable?"

What world do you live in? Seriously, how many games sell 2 million copies in such a brief time?

I've never thought Gears was a sure thing. It was an original property, which could have easily sucked. Just because Microsoft is involved and well known studio does not guarantee tremendous sales.

1 million sales is a huge accomplishment. 2 million sales is pretty astronomical.

I'm more surprised you're not impressed. What does it take to impress Joystiq? I'm sure if this happened on the Wii, this article would be all sugar plums and happy thoughts.

#8 Judd

lety me help u understand. Games for windows and Live anywhere will expand the 360 community to include pc gamers. cross platform communication and gaming.

the key here is CHOICE. By a dedicated gaming machine, xbox 360, or build ur own, PC. To run Gmaes for windows games u will need vista which will run u 200.00+ dollars. Remebr MS makes very little if anything on hardware sells of the xbox 360. Its the games and peripherals they make money on. So they can consumers the ability to buy a console or make a sweet gaming rig and have the same experience. And ofcourse MS makes tons of money

as i stated befor in other posts Games for windows must support the xbox 360 controler. They are being packaged similar to xbox 360 games and is MS's effort to unify a seperate market. buy an xbox 360 or have a gaming pc. either way u will enjoy the same games with the same players Live anywhere.

I also expect the pricing of pc games to rise once vista finally fully launches and live anywhere hits. But thats my personal opinion. Either way u choose how u game on the ms platform. ie xbox 360 or Games for Windows pc gaming

hope u see it now. Ms makes the xbox 360, ms makes vista which is required to run games for windows(will it finally launches expect this to be the situation by mid 2007 or early 2008 right now some games for windows games run on xp)

Lefty

and some vista pricing

199.00 full basic
99.00 for the upgrade from xp
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/home_basic.mspx

mosty gamers will use premium with their gaming rigs
239.00 full premium price
159.00 for the upgrade
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/home_premium.mspx

Ms unify's the market. makes tons of profit on games sold to about 50 million pc gamers and 10 million xbox 360 gamers and os have more profit than hardware. MS does not wnat to be a hardware compnay. They need to do the hardware for the console side of it as theres a market for gamers who do not wnat to build these expensive rigs. console sahve positives and negatives as do pc's but ms is not shooting itself in the foot by a long shot. they are infact setting themselves up to make tons of money

and i forgot to mention XNA which allow devs to makes games that will run on both vista and xbox 360 with no or little porting needed. this is where ms is really going to set themselves up. easy dev for both their supported platforms, live anywhere merging the gap. gamers have choice and killer games. we all win and ms makes tons of freaking money like always

and yes i can't wait for bioshock or alan wake

$1 Billion investment? Epic's Mark Rein is on record saying it cost them $10 Million to make. The highest production cost games are barely approaching $30-40 Million. Stop pulling numbers out of your ass.

$60 per game (on average, including the $70 collector's edition) times 2 million copies equals $120,000,000 (that's $120 MILLION).. That's about $100 Million profit after considering marketing & distribution. That's a 1000% return on investment you moron.

But according to our beloved Joystiq blogger, EVERY $10 Million game should be selling 2 million copies, even if there are only 8 million consoles to play it on, along with the other 100 games that came out this year.

killroy

prior to the launch of the xbox 360 epic sent ms screen shots of gears of war with 256 megs of ram and 512. the xbox 360 was suppose to have 256 megs. so at the last minute ms decided to double the ram casuing all the delays we had last year casue there was only one factory making the tyoe of dddr ram the xbox 360 used.

and that move cost ms 970 million dollars or 1 billion to make it easy. and gears of war was the reason though all agmes benefit from the extra space for textures and what not. This is old news and been out for some time.

So in theory gears cost around 1 billion for ms to make it. get it now?

as far as i'm concerned, halo 2 was xbox exclusive, as was every other xbox exclusive game that eventually made their way onto windows years later. even though far more people game on consoles than on pc's, windows is a microsoft platform so it's only in their own interest to expand it onto windows. the benefits of putting their xbox games onto windows two or more years later far outweigh the drawbacks. otherwise, do you really think they would do it? think about it, a two year old game that doesn't quite sell nearly as many units suddenly skyrockets again in sales cuz it's been released onto windows. they know what they're doing. can those who have good gaming pc's honestly wait two years to play a game? that's one hell of a wait.

I'm not sure where it's ever been accounted that shared 512 memory instead of 256 is a billion dollar difference. Memory is a far cheaper option than say a processor, GPU, or high definition drive.

If I recall, Microsoft is subsidizing a small portion of the overall cost of the 360. The bulk of any costs come from R&D and marketing. In the short term, all consoles sold incur a loss. But all costs are amortized over the life of the console. I think you're quoting amortized costs after X number of consoles are created. Keep in mind, it's all about software revenue, licensing, and ancillary sales over the life of the console, which will hopefully offset any investment costs.

So to say that it cost a billion dollars to have Gears of War is flawed, unless you have some specific accounting information for which I'm unaware.

nick

that figure was quoted from the behind the scenes book on the making of the xbox 360 as well as a sytatment mark reins made little over a month ago

"Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games, says Gears of War set the standard for 512MB of RAM in the Xbox 360, costing Microsoft $1 billion."

http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=84451

But again, I'm sure that's the amortized cost after X amount of consoles are created. The cost difference between 256 and 512 GDDR3 memory if you pay retail is something like $20. Microsoft is not paying retail and is probably receiving a pretty good discount for purchasing in bulk. But let's assume retail cost for the sake of argument... You'd have to create somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million consoles to incur a billion dollar expense for the change in memory.

Again, I'm thinking that billion dollar quote is over the lifetime of the console.

If anything, at this point in time, that memory change has probably cost Microsoft around 100 million dollars.

nick

the problem is the xbox 360 uses 700mhz gddr3 ram. gddr3 is used mainly for video cards and hard to find at retail if at all. its quite expensive and ur using standard ram comparing it to gddr3 ram in your rpice comparison. but ur right and it may not be an exact estimate but tis sure to ahve cost ms quite a bit of money as well as a rocky launch so ms sacrificed alot for gears no matter the exact dollar amount

That billion dollar quote was a flippin' figure of speech, not to be taken literally! Microsoft would have to sell 67 MILLION Xbox 360's at TODAY's GDDR3 RAM prices in order to arrive at that figure! Chances are very high that the cost of the RAM would probably be halved within 2 years or less, meaning the Xbox 360 would need to sell almost 100 million.

Furthermore, ALL Xbox 360 games are benefitting from the extra RAM, not just Gears of War. Your argument is sad.

I could say that Blu-Ray has cost Sony $10 Billion, and I'd have a more realistic argument than yours.

Oh, and by the way, Microsoft has been turning a profit on Xbox 360's as of two quarters ago, and therefore for all intents and purposes, adding that extra 256MB of RAM is actually MAKING Microsoft money. :P

I was using GDDR3 ram from a 256 and 512 ATI video card for my example. ATI developed the standard, although nVidia uses it as well. And it's in the Sony PS3.

GDDR3 is more expensive than typical ram, but not ridiculously so. And it's not impossible to purchase a video card with GDDR3 ram. Several cards have it.

This boils down to the cost difference between the 256 and 512 version, and the amount of consoles that would have to be manufactured for that cost difference to become a billion dollars (which think about it, is a HUGE number). We haven't even discussed that parts will be cheaper over the lifetime of the console, so memory costs will decline.

There is no way Microsoft spent a billion dollars already simply by changing from 256 to 512, unless they pre-bought all the memory to make over 50 million consoles. That in itself is laughably silly. They would never realize a cost reduction! What if they only sold 30 million consoles?! They're probably purchasing a bulk numbers but just enough to cover a couple of months of supply. A billion dollars of memory is like 7 to 10 years worth of supply. Maybe more.

The quote has to be in regards to cost associated over the entire life of the console. Even then, he may have simply been joking.

yea my 6600gt winfast has gddr3 ram and it was only 160 last year(that maybe a ebay win i forget) and to:

6. I love this game, but you have to admit it was like an oasis. When there's hardly anything else to play, of course people are going to jump on the game of this magnitude. Starve a man and offer him a steak.

Umm genius there were enough great games where no one was "starved" saints row is still fun and so is dead rising. and when COD3 and rainbow six coming out around the same time. so i fail to see the whole starved thing

Lefty

So only Gears Of War is "Allowed" to use the extra RAM? or is that allowed to be used by all titles to make them look superior to the competition?

Thats like saying Resistance FOM cost 40 billion$, since its the only game that needs a Blu-Ray drive, the drive is $300 per machine, of which they expect to sell 100 million of and that the Blu-Ray drive was also responsible for the manufacturing delays. I haven't even started to factor in the share price decrease from all the PS3 manufacturing shortage problems.

All the points against multiplayer are lame. Shotgun battles and only Shotgun, if you use anything else you lose? So far from the truth. It really was to a point where everybody was only using the Shotgun last week, but it's happening less now.

Regarding player limits, I think 4v4 is perfect, not very long lobby wait time and good even teams. An increase to 5v5 would be acceptable, 6v6 would be the absolute maximum I'd ever want to see it, especially with the current maps as-is.