The Coalition has spent two years selling Gears of War: E-Day on a single image: the ground splitting open. On August 12 that image became a controller. Xbox revealed the Gears of War: E-Day Limited Edition Xbox Wireless Controller at $89.99, pre-orders live now, shipping September 30 — six days before the game.
It is a genuinely aggressive piece of industrial design, and not in the usual sense of a logo printed on plastic. The grips and shoulders are moulded and laser-etched into cracked asphalt, with red seams glowing through the fractures as though an E-hole has just erupted underneath. Where the crust breaks apart across the face, the Crimson Omen shows through in translucent red.
The details that actually change how it feels
Xbox's Limited Edition pads live or die on whether the theme survives contact with your hands, and this one front-loads texture over paint:
- 3D moulded, laser-etched cracked asphalt across the grips — physical relief, not a printed pattern
- Blacked-out ABXY buttons, with a single transparent red X as the accent
- Red triggers and a translucent D-pad
- A dark silver metallic COG tag set into the battery door
- Textured grips on the rear
The blacked-out face buttons are the risky call. Gears has always leaned on high-contrast red-on-black, and dropping the letters to matte black means the labels effectively disappear in a dark room — a deliberate aesthetic trade rather than an oversight, but one worth knowing before you commit $89.99.
Design Lab gets the version with the skulls
Starting September 30, the same day the Limited Edition ships, Xbox opens an E-Day option in Xbox Design Lab — and the artwork there is the more striking of the two. Illustrator Luke Preece supplied an exclusive design built around a pale skull-and-lancer motif in ice blue over red, closer to a tour poster than a hardware skin.
Design Lab builds also take the usual paid add-ons — metallic triggers, rubberised grips and a custom engraving — which means the practical ceiling on an E-Day pad is meaningfully higher than the $89.99 sticker on the Limited Edition. If you want the Preece art, you wait until September 30 either way.
And a charging dock, because of course
Rounding out the set is an officially licensed 8BitDo charging dock in E-Day dressing, which drops the pad onto magnetic contacts rather than asking you to line up a plug. It works with Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One controllers, so it is not locked to the Limited Edition pad.
8BitDo's standard Xbox dock sits around $25 and its previous licensed edition ran $34.99, so expect the E-Day version to land in that neighbourhood rather than anywhere near controller money.
The timing is not an accident
Gears of War: E-Day launches October 6 on Xbox Series X|S and PC, including Steam. It is a prequel set fourteen years before the original Gears of War, on Emergence Day itself — the moment the Locust Horde came up through the surface of Sera and ended the world above it. A younger Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago lead, with John DiMaggio and Carlos Ferro returning after voicing the pair in every previous entry.
The reveal also lands the day before the second beta window opens. The first ran August 6–10 for pre-order holders and subscribers; a second weekend, open to everyone on eligible platforms, runs August 13 to August 17. Announcing a $89.99 collectible the day before a few million more people try the game is the kind of scheduling that does not happen by chance.
Pre-orders for the Limited Edition are open now at Xbox.com, the Microsoft Store and participating retailers worldwide.
