Gears of War E-Day runs at 60 FPS with UE5 MegaLights on Xbox Series X

Gears of War E-Day highlights Unreal Engine 5’s latest tech at State of Unreal 2026

Gears of War: E-Day is shaping up to be one of Unreal Engine 5’s flagship game releases. At State of Unreal 2026, The Coalition showcased how Gears of War: E-Day runs at 60 FPS on Xbox Series X with Unreal Engine 5’s “MegaLights” feature active. This allows the game’s real-time lighting system to operate with a huge number of dynamic lights. This creates more realistic lighting and accelerates game development by avoiding the use of pre-baked lighting.

The Coalition worked with Epic Games to bring MegaLights to Gears of War: E-Day on Xbox and PC. MegaLights only officially became “Production Ready” with the release of Unreal Engine 5.8, which only launched this week. This makes Gears of War E-Day the first game to use MegaLights, and the first game to prove that it can run at 60 FPS on Xbox Series X.

During the game’s State of Unreal Demo, it was highlighted that E-Day also uses Nanite. Using Nanite, E-Day has “100x the geometric detail” of prior Gears games. This is thanks to Nanite’s micro-polygon rendering tech. This allows all objects in E-Day to look incredibly detailed up close and at a distance. Nanite gives E-Day a next-generation level of environmental detail.

When the game launches on October 6th, Gears of War: E-Day will be one of the most advanced Unreal Engine 5 games. Additionally, it could be one of the best-performing Unreal Engine 5 games with its 60 FPS mode on Xbox Series X.  Let’s hope that this 60 FPS mode is stable! Let’s also hope that PC gamers will be able to target higher framerates.

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