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Have you ever played the Xbox exclusive Gears of War? Well, I have played it extensively for many years both casually and competitively. It is a 3rd person shooter made by EPIC Games which first started back in 2006.This is my views on the downfall of the Gears of War series.​

Gears of War 1 was a major success, selling over 6 million copies. In 2008, EPIC Games produced a sequel called Gears of War 2. Gears of War 2 sold more than the first game by over half a million copies. But sadly, the next 2 games sold less copies. Gears of War 3 was close to Gears of War 1's sales with just under 6 million copies. And lastly, Gears of War: Judgment had sold less than a fourth of Gears of War 3 with just over 1.2 million copies so far.​

Some of you may ask, where did the game go wrong? How did the sales turn so bad? Well, it started with Gears of War 3. Don't get me wrong, Gears of War 3 is still a very good game. However, there was just too big of a change in the gameplay. Anyone who played the first two knew Gears of War was a shotgun-based game and the rifles were used to a minimum. Gears of War 3 changed all that. With rifles being much better and with the addition of two weapons, the Retro Lancer and the Sawed-Off Shotgun, the game was aimed more towards casual players who want to play every now and then. This change influenced the Versus a lot in the way that there were many more new people that used these weapons and drove many Veteran Gears away from the game. This was the first Gears of War that wasn't considered a shotgun only type of Versus anymore.​

Even after all of this, there is still a big question. How did the sales go from so high to so low between Gears of War 3 and Judgment? EPIC decided to make a lot of changes that drove away people. They changed the classic COG v Locust to Blue COG v Red COG. For those who don't know the terms, COG was the humans, and the Locust were pretty much monster-like beings. They also removed one of the biggest unique things in Gears of War, a state of Down But Not Out. This was where you would not die but just go down and have the ability to get back up if not killed in time. The only way to not go into this state before was either by an explosive death, a one shot with the shotgun, or a chainsaw/retro charge execution.​

The game itself also shipped with a very small character roster and only 4 Standard Versus Multiplayer Maps. The other 4 maps were for two game modes called Overrun and Survival. They are both class based so many people didn't like these restrictions. It also meant that these game modes were the replacement for Horde mode in Gears of War. This got many people angry because of the lack of content in the Standard Versus, which caused many people to stop playing it. Today, Gears of War 3 still has more players on it than Gears of War: Judgment. Gears of War: Judgment, on an average day, doesn't break 2000 players online.​

With such a broken fanbase, and many people not wanting to buy a Gears of War game again, this may be the end of the line for the Gears of War series. If they decide to make another one, it will be very hard to get the numbers seen in Gears of War 2 and 3 again.​

What do you think about Gears of War? Do you think now that this game series has had such a huge failure compared to the others that there is a chance for recovery? Will we even see another Gears of War? Let us know in the comments below.​

All of the sales numbers were found here.​