Gears of War: E-Day Goes Gold, Preload Times and PC Specs Revealed
The Coalition has confirmed that Gears of War: E-Day has gone gold, meaning the prequel is finished and ready ahead of its October 6, 2026 launch on Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store, with day one availability on Xbox Game Pass. Preload opens for everyone on September 29, and anyone who picks up the Premium or Collector’s Edition gets a five day head start on October 1.
Preload and Early Access Times by Region
Both the September 29 preload window and the October 1 early access launch go live at the same local times, just two days apart. Here’s when each one unlocks in major time zones:
- Los Angeles / Vancouver (PT): 8:00 AM
- Denver (MT): 9:00 AM
- Chicago (CT): 10:00 AM
- New York / Toronto (ET): 11:00 AM
- UTC: 3:00 PM
- London (BST): 4:00 PM
- Berlin, Vienna, Paris (CEST): 5:00 PM
- Johannesburg (SAST): 5:00 PM
- Sydney, Melbourne (AEST): 1:00 AM the next day
If you didn’t pick up Premium or the Collector’s Edition, you’ll need to wait until October 6 for standard launch, though preloading now means the game will be ready to play the moment it unlocks for you.
What’s in Each Edition
Standard Edition includes just the base game, though everyone who pre-orders any edition gets the Exfil Dom legendary character skin and a matching legendary weapon skin set, both of which also unlocked early access to August’s open beta.
Premium Edition adds the five day early access, the Bravo Squad signature weapon pack, the Emergence customization pack at launch (two character skins, two character poses, two weapon skin sets, and more), four additional seasonal customization packs as they roll out, and 1,000 Iron, the game’s premium currency. A Premium Upgrade is also sold separately for Standard Edition owners who want to add those perks later.
Collector’s Edition bundles all of the Premium Edition’s digital content with a 15 inch light up Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago statue, a metal replica of Carlos Santiago’s COG tags, an art print, and a custom SteelBook case. It’s sold as a physical disc for Xbox Series X and a digital code for Steam, through the Xbox Game Studios shop and select retailers.
Gears of War: E-Day’s Standard, Premium, and Premium Upgrade editions compared
PC System Requirements: Ray Tracing Is Mandatory
On PC, Gears of War: E-Day needs 115GB of SSD storage no matter which quality preset you’re targeting, and there’s a hard requirement that will trip up older rigs: a hardware ray tracing capable graphics card. The Coalition’s official requirements note reads that “graphics cards without dedicated hardware ray tracing support are not supported,” so cards without RT cores won’t run the game at all, no matter how otherwise capable they are.
- Minimum (1080p, 60 fps, Medium): RTX 5050 / RTX 2060 / RX 6600 / RX 9060 (6GB VRAM), Ryzen 5 2600X / Core i7-6850K / i5-10400, 12GB RAM
- Recommended (1440p, 60+ fps, High): RTX 5060 / RTX 3060 Ti / RX 6700 XT / RX 9060 XT (8GB VRAM), Ryzen 5 5600 / Core i5-11600K, 16GB RAM
- Ultra (4K, 60+ fps, Ultra): RTX 5070 Ti / RX 7900 XT (12GB VRAM), Ryzen 7 7800X3D / Core i7-14700K, 16GB RAM
That 115GB figure is actually a reduction from earlier requirement drafts that had circulated over the summer pointing to as much as 130GB, so the final build shrank a bit on the way to launch.
Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel set decades before the original trilogy, and The Coalition has already shown it’s listening to player feedback: when fans pushed back on a Horde only early access beta back in August, the studio added the Versus PvP mode to that same beta window within days. That kind of responsiveness bodes well heading into next month’s launch.
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Picture Source: Xbox Game Studios, The Coalition
