Gears of War a failure, sells a meager 3 million copies

by Ludwig Kietzmann on Jan 19th 2007 4:25PM

Crushingly grim news emerged from Microsoft headquarters today, with the announcement that Gears of War had only managed to sell 3 million copies within the cavernous expanse of ten weeks. Further information imparted by the depress release (which had to go lie down for a bit) concerns the game's downloadable content. Last week's pair of new multiplayer maps saw a mere 750,000 downloads, with all content (including themes and videos) reaching an embarassing 1.5 million Xbox Live users.

Having failed to meet their original goal of selling 3 million and one copies, the employees of Epic Games are now expected to tighten the belts holding up their slightly effeminate, jewel-encrusted pants. The Gears of War developer will surely need to crank out a hit soon if they hope to pay off Cliffy B's recent acquisition of 867,000 chocolate flamingos.

Source

Tags: Epic Games, EpicGames, Gears of War, GearsOfWar, MSFT, Shooter, Xbox Live, Xbox-360, XboxLive

Reader Comments (66)

Lol, only three million copies? It if came out on a real system like the PS3 and had 4-D graphics, it would have probably sold 90 million. It's a shame because I really like Cliffyb, he's so pretty. It's just too bad that he made his game for the sex-box three-shitty.

Ha ha! That might have been the most sarcastic piece of journalism I've ever read. Kudos!

Truly a great game, I don't care how short some people complain it is. The multiplayer gives it some legs and with downloadable content, could even give Halo a run for its money.

Resistance has nothing on Gears as far as gameplay and graphics. It does support more people in mutiplayer however, but that's a tradeoff for the immense graphics and tecture Gears offers.

A really good game that deserves its success, if only it had a little more story.

Pity, this game is pretty damn awesome, lol, its rather annoying to know that Burger King Games sold around this much or more :(

So it was really a sarcastic piece. I was almost questioning if that truely was sarcastic or not. I believe that wasn't very many downloads for the game though regardless, but that does say that there could, quite possibly be 1/2 of the XBox Live users owning Gears of War. But wasn't that number the total XBox Live users meaning XBox AND X360?

If it came out for the PS3 it would have actual load times as opposed to... well really virtually "none." That and the limit of copies sold would be... the limit of systems availble... which means people might have possibly actually bought a PS3 which would mean that I wouldn't be able to walk into circuit city tonight and pick one up...

It would sell much more on the DS.

Why do people complain about negative PS3 news? Isn't this poor sales for GOW clear evidence that the PS3 is back, baby! Bigger than ever!

And with the bad news for the Wii in the earlier post, I bet Sony executives are already cashing in their stock options.

I'm running out right now to buy a PS3 to play Marvel UltimateAlliance on to celebrate!

Great game. It will continue to sell well.

I would say that 750,000 downloads of the maps is quite high. Not everyone has live, and not everyone plays multiplayer a tonne. So, your looking at 25% of owners downloading the maps.

It definitely lived up to the hype!

@Touch My Box & Brian

I didn't think anyone out there was dull enough to not catch the joke. Thanks for proving me wrong.

Awesome, does Ludwig have his own blog? I'd read that every day.

@Intentless

Every game I have played on the PS3 has had equal load times or better than the X360 so I am not sure where you are getting your info.

Maybe if you actually play it instead of listening to what all the other X360 fanboys have to say you would know.

@11: Or maybe they're playing along with the original joke.

To #11...hey jackass! Could you not tell that our posts are also sarcastic? How obvious do they have to be? Box writes "if it had come out on a real system like the PS3 with 4D graphics" and I write how I'm going to celebrate by a PS3 system to play a port that is on every other system.

DOn't worry, brother, I'll type "sarcasm" next to every sentence in the future for you.

Wow with all this talk of FPS's you know whats on my mind....how bad ass wii sports is..LOL.

The average age of a gamer falls around their late 20s and early 30s. What this means is we all have jobs and some of the more unfortunate ones have kids. As much as we would all love to play games day and night we don't have the time anymore but we still want a damn fun game that we can accomplish and GOW delivered.

GOW is a great game albeit a bit overhyped but I blame more of that on Microsoft and their PR team.

#14

I got that you were being sarcastic, because 90 million is way to low of number. The 40 player deathmatch would have easily had it sell more copies.

Hey! Wait! Is this sarcasm!?

clever squirrels!

"I didn't think anyone out there was dull enough to not catch the joke. Thanks for proving me wrong." -#11

Oh, the irony of it all. *sigh*.

Ummm actually I believe that joystiq itself has refered to articles posted by IGN and other news sites citeing the fact that the PS3 does have slow load times. If there was more than one halfway decent game for the system I would pick it up seeing as its not hard to find....

Hey #16,

Not sure if you're stating that Gears is the right length (I think so, playing through it again) or if you're just complaining about wife and kids (have that in spades minus the complaints).

As for over hyped? It's won quite a few GOTY awards, it's dominated Live play and it's sold quite a few copies in a short amount of time. How was anything that came out before it shipped NOW considered over-hyped?

Seeing as tech reviews themselves site that BR disks and their respective drives are slower than regular DVD and some HD DVDs...

Is that 3 million SOLD or SHIPPED?

And just imagine if Gears of War had come out for the PS2 instead of the 360. Sales would have been so much higher since there are so many more PS2s out there than 360s.

PS3 fanboys are so funny. If the console is so great, why did Sony have to discount it already in Japan? It's like a Ferrari with no tires: a lot of potential, but right now, it's just a big expensive doorstop.

This entry cracked me up way more than it probably should have. :)

Maybe #11 was just joking about not getting that they were going along with the original joke :O

Uh, Earth to Ludwig, like, 3 million is like a pretty big number you know. And 10 weeks is like, barely over 2 months, so it’s like selling pretty good you know. Go back Journalism school so you can, like, learn to not write so biasedly, and maybe try checking with the numbers of games that sell good and games that sell not so good. Gears is selling pretty good, dum dum.

Just because you don’t like the Xbox 3, I don’t understand why you do whatever it takes, ruin as many people’s lives, so long as you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long as you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist.

@funkonaut-

if that were the case then why did FFXII get outsold by Gears of War?

@ 16-

I have to agree with 21....what constitutes as overhyped? I mean this is the world we live in. Everything is overhyped. There are so many mediums out there you can't help to not overhype things.
I had fun playing GOW. Playing it on insane now. It a game that sucks you in and it is hard to put it down. I agree...it could have been a little longer but trying to get all the achievments will occupy me for awhile.

OldbOy went to Derek Zoolander's School For Kids Who Can't Read Good.

God the sarcasm in here is so thick, I'm having trouble telling the PS3 fanboys from the 360 fanboys.

I'm investigatorying the truthiness of this right now.

LOLRAMBO.

That is all.

"If the console is so great, why did Sony have to discount it already in Japan? It's like a Ferrari with no tires: a lot of potential, but right now, it's just a big expensive doorstop."

it's been the same price since launch. they just got it cheaper than us.

I have news for you Walter Kronkyte......you aren't. Damn Zoolander is the best movie ever made. haha thanks for reminding me Oldboy

Ps MerMAN!

m$0ft is teh sux0rz. tehy rofl my woffles. i lernd 1337speek from wikipedia. s0ny pwnt m$0ft. s0ny FTW!

LoL. Just...
LoL.

This just prooves that Burger King games are the best :) Long live Burger King ^^

games where you shoot people turn me on like crazy!!

oh well, im sure ut2007 will make up for it

I hope it's bigger than Halo 3 just because I'm so sick of Halo.

I think this really brings out how informed and intelligent people are about the gaming industry:

1. Those that believe the way in which this news was presented and cheer for the Xbox360 to do well despite this “weak and poorly selling” game

2. Those that also believe the appearance of this news, and, thereby, ignorantly jump on the Xbox360 bashing train

3. And… those that actually realize what is going on and know that this is fantastic breaking news for the Xbox360 even though this news has been made to appear in a negative light

==================
Which one were you?

Man all the guys over at Epic should probably look for other jibs if they can't even move three million and one copies of a game.

"Uh, Earth to Ludwig, like, 3 million is like a pretty big number you know."

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

to Saturn2888, why would they add numbers of downloads for the xbox 1...they are talking about xbox 360, which the game was released for not xbox 1.

Thanks alot, now I can't stop thinking about CliffyB tenderly cuddling a chocolate flamingo while having a copy of GoW in the other arm.

Only selling 3 million for 10 million 360 owners is a GOOD thing! The fact that 70% of 360 owners are not interested in Gear of War implies that the 360 has a broad audience interested in a variety of genres, not just shooters. One of the reasons the XBox 1 did not sell well was because it only appealed to a limited niche audience. However, the poor sales of the 360's best shooter, combined with news that 50% of 360 owners never owned an XBox 1, demonstrates that the 360 has more mainstream appeal than the XBox 1!

k, a little bit TOO much sarcasm in the opening article

Could you please stop the sarcasm?
It's just unprofessional and draws more ire and discussion than it deserves.

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Gears of War a failure, sells a meager 3 million copies

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