edit 2: My niece wanted to play this, so we tried playing your broken game online. It didn’t work, but what was funny was character selection. This early teenager would rather play as Jack than Del lol. If that’s not a damning rebuke for your writing/story staff, I don’t know what is lol. End edit 2
This is feedback for TC and Xbox. Fanboys need not apply. EDIT: I will not create further posts, but I will edit this one because the delusional fanboys still don’t get it.
*This is not a hate rant (looking at you Xbox overlords). I love this franchise but the current direction of both Xbox and The Coalition will destroy it if they don’t start learning why Xbox and its 1st party titles have failed so miserably this generation.
1)Gears 5 is a flop. At its peak it managed to draw in 3 million unique logins. Unique logins are not sold copies. It has sold less than Gears of War Judgement (released on one platform), even though it was available on multiple platforms and under $1 GP promotions. Its kindergarten level problem solving. If a product costs 100’s of millions to make and 80-90% of customers only spend $1 to play it, you not only failed to recoup your production costs, but you have failed to turn a profit. And Gears 5 is a spectacular failure on this front (regardless of MTX spending, the financial gulf is massive). 40 million Xbox Ones in the wild plus the entirety of Steam/Windows 10 and its peak was 3 million log ins, not sales. That is abysmal.
2)Xbox is damaged controlling. Big time. Removing reviews, locking posts, but more than that, trying to spin this as some sort of win with Game Pass. You know how you can tell that’s completely false? Microsoft recently decided to stop sharing data/metrics on active users. Xbox does not report console sales, they do not report software sales and now they will not report active user numbers. Don’t you find it odd that out of the 3 console platforms, only one of them refuses to offer metrics/data of any kind on how well their business is doing?
3)Game Pass is not sustainable in its current form. The quality of Xbox’s 1st party lineup will suffer (even more so) and be even more aggressive with MTX’s to make up for production costs that cannot be recouped in a $10 subscription service. Read the news. The biggest player in the subscription based service game is Netflix. Not only are they starting to lose subs, but they are 8 billion dollars in debt. Putting older games or 3rd party games in Game Pass will work. “AAA” exclusives, day and date with release? No way will this work without further damaging the quality and the brands on offer. Either Xbox games will suffer a massive drop in quality or the price of the service will increase sharply. There’s no other way this ends if Microsoft want to turn a profit.
4)The solution. Your competitors (Sony and Nintendo) are showing the way forward. It’s not an argument anymore, they are outselling the Xbox platform by more than a 2-1 margin. A PS4 exclusive can sell 3 million copies in the first few days and go on to sell upwards of 10 million after that. Has anything on Xbox One even approached that level? Xbox hardware sales have nearly flat-lined. Gears used to be a system seller. Not anymore. Learn from your competition, their success speaks for itself.
Look TC, maybe your hands are tied by Microsoft. Gears 5 isn’t a horrible game, its just a horrible Gears game. Gears isn’t getting stale (as a brand), the fans are still here, you (or Microsoft) just forgot what made it great. A lot of people say its a great bargain for $1. Is that was Gears has become? A bargain bin title given away for free to promote Game Pass and MTX’s? I hope you disagree TC and will do right by fans in Gears 6.
END EDIT
There’s not much else to say really, so this will be my last post. Sales numbers are starting to come out for Gears 5 and it doesn’t look good. I get that Game Pass has a lot to do with that and that you’ll try to recoup costs through gaming whales/MTX’s but that’s not a viable or sustainable model for Gears and you know it. Personally, I’m glad the reports are saying its the worst selling in history because maybe it’ll force TC and Xbox to rethink a little. Probably not.
Combine that with the new reports of Xbox console sales at an all time low, the number of people that “hit it and quit it” through Game Pass, the Xbox store removing negative reviews (lol), continually slipping in the “most played” list and it’s shaping up to be the worst performing title in the franchises history. That’s what happens when you put your politics ahead of story telling and imitate (empty open worlds, the “hero” based gameplay in online, making other modes more “accessable”) rather than innovate.
Escape is “okay” but when you have enough ammo for 2 players and throw 3 into a game, someones not going to enjoy that experience (public randos are not very team oriented FYI). Forcing people to be different characters in Horde? Beyond stupid. I could make lists of what needs to be fixed in this game.
You watered everything down to appeal to the masses and forgot you had a built in fanbase since 2006. A fanbase that knows what a Gears game is supposed to deliver. You imitated other popular online games rather than innovated new modes (Horde mode, beast mode from the OT games) even though you have that fan base mentioned earlier who are a wellspring of free ideas. You loaded the game to the brim with grind and MTX’s knowing full well how much gamers hate that crap in a “AAA” $60 game.
You guys had one of the best franchises in gaming and you’ve damned near ruined it. The sales numbers and user reviews are reflecting that. Gears is a system seller no more. And that’s on your watch, Coalition.
I hope Microsoft ends Game Pass, because if Gears 5 is representative of the AAA quality customers can expect out of Xbox’s 1st party lineup that releases on Game Pass, Microsoft just handed the next gen to PS5.
Thats my feedback. Double down on the stupid crap again in Gears 6 and MS will lose another customer to Sony.