Gears of War E-Day arrives October 6 as an Xbox and PC exclusive
It's no longer coming to the PS5.
Microsoft wasted no time getting straight into Gears of War: E-Day to kick off its big Summer Game Fest show. In a new trailer, we got to see a mixture of in-game action and cut scenes, some more context on what's happened to Earth, and a release date: October 6, 2026. I guess not every Xbox game is running scared from GTA V.
The gameplay trailer showcases plenty of close-quarter violence, acid-filled monsters and a broken Earth. E-Day is set, as the name suggests, on the day that the Locust came to our world. The trailer begins with series stalwart Marcus Fenix in some distinctly civvy clothing, and ends with Fenix meeting his buddy Dominic Santiago, apparently for the first time. Perhaps the biggest news drop was more to do what what E-Day isn't: In a reversal of plans, new Xbox head Asha Sharma announced that the game was no longer coming to PlayStation 5. It'll instead arrive on Xbox, PC and Xbox Cloud. We thought that might kick off a wave of switcheroos, but Fable and Halo: Campaign Evolved trailers arrived later in the showcase with that shiny PS5 logo still intact.
In an extended segment that played after the main event, developer The Coalition dove more into the game's tech platform and features. (Microsoft published a very long blog post summarizing the Gears segment if you're looking to catch up.) As we already knew, Gears of War: E-Day is built on Unreal Engine (the first Gears game was basically built by Epic Games as a Unreal Engine 3 showcase), and Microsoft is promising 4K, 60 fps gameplay with ray-traced visuals for the campaign, as well as up to 120 fps action for multiplayer modes. Either way, it's all looking suitably visceral and smooth so far — hopefully Xbox has a playable build somewhere here in Los Angeles for us to try out.