Gold build, three modes, store trailer
Gears of War: E-Day
Gears of War: E-Day is the Emergence Day origin story from The Coalition, published by Xbox Game Studios on Steam as app 3010850. Fourteen years before the original Gears of War, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago fight through the city of Kalona after the Locust Horde reaches the surface. Xbox lists the genre as a 3rd Person Cover-Shooter, and Steam files the same game under Action and Adventure. The campaign can be played alone. The store page also allows up to four players online across Campaign, Horde Siege, and Versus.
Mike Crump, studio head at The Coalition, wrote on September 17, 2026 that the build had gone gold. Premium owners start on October 1, 2026 at 8am Pacific, which is 15:00 UTC, up to five days before everyone else. The worldwide launch is October 6, 2026 at that same hour, and that is the day Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass join. Pre-install opens September 29 at 15:00 UTC on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Steam. On the October 1 store read, Steam still marked the app coming soon and still showed October 6.
What the origin story covers
Danielle Partis wrote the August 25 campaign hands-on, and it opens in Act 2 during three intense nights after the Locust reach the surface. Bravo Squad in that stretch is Marcus, Dominic, Lucas Reyes, and Mags Carter. Dominic names his wife Maria as next of kin and asks about Ephyra. Lucas and Mags do not give a next of kin in the briefing. Captain Akila Grey takes deployment details at City Hall. After that building becomes a COG base, Colonel Trench briefs the squad with Kalona's mayor, and the write-up does not give the mayor a name.
The fight is still a cover shooter built in Unreal Engine 5. Low cover, a hunched sprint, a slide that lets you shoot, and a jump that climbs the city are the movement tools players will use in Kalona and in the multiplayer spaces. The hands-on treats those nights as the first time the surface sees the Horde, not as a recap of the later Pendulum Wars stories. Carlos Santiago is already a fallen brother in this timeline, and the Collector's replicas of his COG tags sit with the physical edition rather than in the campaign loadout.
Campaign, Horde Siege, and Versus
Horde Siege is the PvE wave mode, fielding 12 players as three squads of four. Steam prints four class names for a squad: Assault, Marksman, Medic, and Breacher. Those rows stop at the name. They do not ship a weapon list or an ability chart, so a loadout guess would be a fiction. Versus is the refined 4v4 side, Ranked or Social, on new maps, with jump, vault, slide, and flank called out as the cover tools. A July 30 multiplayer post describes four Versus modes and leaves their names off the page. Ranked opens October 13, a week after launch, and weekly challenges refresh the same day.
Console split-screen on the store page is two players. Online co-op goes up to four. Competitive multiplayer goes up to eight. Controller support on the Steam app is marked full. Pre-order text offers early access to the Open Beta plus the Exfil Dom Character Skin and the Exfil Weapon Skin Set at launch. The Open Beta early window itself was August 6 through about August 10, after a July multiplayer beta, and a later Steam note told PC players that weekend 2 needed an SSD and would not run from a hard drive.
How the editions line up
Steam lists a Standard package, 1580011, at $69.99 for the October 6 launch, and a Premium package, 1580013, at $99.99 for the October 1 early window. Premium adds the Bravo Squad Signature Weapon Pack, the Emergence Omen Weapon Skin, five seasonal packs that start with the Emergence Pack, and 1,000 Iron. The Collector's Edition is physical. Neither the Steam page nor the announcement prints a USD price for it. It includes Premium, a 15-inch statue, a Luke Preece steelbook, Carlos Santiago COG tags, an oath drawer, and a Feral Wretch print.
Nicole Fawcette's description of the statue has Marcus grabbing a falling Dom while Dom headshots a Feral Wretch. Marcus holds the Prototype Chainsaw Lancer, and a Crimson Omen is carved on the back. The steelbook art puts Marcus on one side and Dom on the other, each holding Carlos's tags. The tags are zinc alloy and marked ES for the Embry Star after Aspho Fields. Season 1, called Emergence, runs eight weeks from Premium early access until December 1, with Halloween, 20 Years of Gears, and the printed Thanksgibbing beat inside that window.
PC, handhelds, and the gold clock
The minimum PC line asks for Windows 10 64-bit, 12 GB of memory, hardware ray tracing, and 115 GB of free SSD space, plus DirectX 12 and broadband. Recommended play moves to Windows 11, 16 GB, and a higher GPU tier, and it names HDR10, DLSS 4.5, and AMD FSR Redstone, with frame generation optional on cards that support it. A Steam note puts RTX Mega Geometry beside DLSS 4.5 and ray tracing, and it names Kate Rayner and Mike Perzel. The specification graphic was corrected on September 28, 2026, after the gold note.
Handheld play is named for Steam Deck, Xbox Ally X, and Xbox Ally. The store page does not print a frame rate for those devices, so a Deck owner should treat the name as support, not as a performance promise. Xbox Play Anywhere shares progression between Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC. The July 30 post also names Xbox cloud next to those builds. The English Steam age gate reads 18 and the US gate reads 17, beside an ESRB Mature rating at 17. The full board list, weapon table, class notes, and season bars live on the pages linked under this one.
Related pages
Sources
The home board is the gold date, the three modes, and the store trailer, with the city, the siege, and the launch clock one click away from here.