Gears of War: E-Day gets an Emergence Pie tie-in

Xbox and the New York pizza chain Prince St. Pizza have announced a tie-in for the launch of Gears of War: E-Day. The limited-edition Emergence Pie goes on sale at Prince St. Pizza sites across the United States and in Toronto, Canada until 1 November, a little under four weeks after the game itself arrives.

The pie is a meat-heavy build: spicy vodka sauce and fresh mozzarella under a thick layer of ground pepperoni and sausage, finished with Carbone Fine Food's Aglio e Peperoncino Italian chilli crisp. The name nods to Emergence Day, the catastrophe the prequel is built around.

A code with every slice, and a Lancer pizza cutter

Buying an Emergence Pie, or even a single slice of one, produces a code that unlocks a Gears of War: E-Day pizza emblem for use in the game. The line also extends to a limited-edition pizza cutter modelled on the Prototype Lancer, the game's chainsaw-armed rifle, which went on sale at shop.princestreetpizza.com on 28 September.

“Gears fans and pizza lovers have been the same crowd for a long time,” said Lawrence Longo, chief executive of Prince St. Pizza. “Working with XBOX gave us a way to build for that overlap instead of putting two names on a box and calling it a day. The pie, the emblem, the cutter, all of it started with what the fans would actually want.”

The game lands on 6 October

Gears of War: E-Day releases on 6 October for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and Steam, listed at $69.99 on the US store. Pre-orders add a gift card plus the Exfil Dom character skin and the Exfil weapon skin set at launch. Set 14 years before the original game, the campaign follows Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago on the day the Locust Horde first breaks through, with a rebuilt Horde Siege co-op mode and a refined Versus suite alongside it.

Our opinion

Franchise food promotions are usually forgettable, and the reason this one is not is the pizza cutter. A Prototype Lancer that happens to cut pizza is an object a fan would actually want on a shelf, and pairing it with an in-game emblem turns a novelty into a reason to walk into a shop during the fortnight when the game is newest. That is sharper work than a branded box, and the quote from Prince St. Pizza's chief executive, that the overlap between the two audiences is real, is the only justification for a tie-in that holds up. The caution sits on the other side of the counter: this is a horror-toned origin story selling itself with a novelty topping, and the campaign still has to convince people that the worst day in the series' history needed a pizza behind it.