[Bloomberg] Baldur's Gate 3: 2.5m Sales in Pre-Release [Up: Over 10M]

[nextgeneration]

If that 5.2 mil number is accurate for Aug 16, that means that approximately 3.3% of people who have bought the game on Steam left reviews (171,313 reviews on Aug 16, 12:25 PM PST). In the past 2 days, the game is still getting close to 7k new reviews each day. Let's say the game averages 6k reviews daily from now until the end of the month. That would then place total reviews for the game at 262,093. If we assume the same percentage of 3.3% leaving reviews, that would place total sold for Baldur's on the 31st at 7.94 mil. Also, this game has crazy legs right now. As of right now, 8/17/23, 9:41 AM PST, the game is still #1 in 21 of the 29 countries tracked by Steam.

 

[Charamiwa]

A large portion of those 2.5M early adopters have probably contributed to the high concurrent number, without adding a new sale.

 

[fiendcode]

Diablo is one of the biggest IPs in gaming, BG is...not.

Ah, what? BG1 pretty much revitalized the entire CRPG genre in the late 90s, it immediately put Bioware on the map and ended up being Interplay's best selling title ever. It directly spawned a similarly big sequel and several other revered PC RPG series (Icewind Dale, Torment, Neverwinter Nights) and also well a regarded console spinoff series (Dark Alliance).

This is absolutely a legendary brand in the PC space. It may not be as huge as Diablo (at least, outside the west) but there is still significant brand cache here.

 

[AngryAlchemist]

To be honest, I kind of see where @fiendcode is coming from. The buzz around the game would make you think it's a smash hit, and it is, but the actual sales since release are closer to ~2.7M then if it's at 5.2M. Still a huge amount, but imagine if every triple A game had 3 years of EA to inflate launch numbers.

It also correlates with the data posted earlier in this thread by @digi_era

About ~2 million people started new classes, so adding that to the 2.5 million people who bought the game prelaunch, we get a deficit of only a few hundred thousand. In other words about 86% of people started the game, which would make sense.

Still, i would take a glass half full approach. 2.7M is still massive for sales on one platform, for a genre that was considered weak for decades. And it's just going to keep growing. It's already one of the biggest success stories of the year, and legs will continue to be good. It's just, uh, not exactly the high water mark that'd you think considering all the "triple A devs are scared" rheteoric that has been seen online. In that respect, I can see how the hyperbole around it's launch might skew how people see the result.

Also, Baldur's Gate was never that niche. It was a huge release on the PC market in the 90's, and it's sales look small because PC games took forever to mature in terms of sales (basically until Steam). It's hard to compare exactly because PC data was all over the place in the 90's, but the original Doom for example probably sold around 2-2.5 million copies during the 90's including it's shareware version, since sales of the shareware version in the U.S. were at a little over a million, and the Ultimate Doom apparently sold around 780,000 (thought admittedly I can't find the source for this on Wikipedia). This would also make sense given the total number of sales for Doom were given to be 3.5 million by early 1999 in "all its many versions".

The reason I'm making such an outlandish comparison is that Baldur's Gate as a series sold 3.5 million copies by 2001, only about two years and a half after being pushed to market. As a PC excusive. And Bioware confirmed that Baldur's Gate 1 sold 2 million units, and that 2 sold 2 million units, and the expansions had pretty good attach rates too of ~600k for BG1's expansion and ~500k for BG2's expansion. The series totalled 5 million units worldwide. Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20080409131841/http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/

The point is, given the state of the market back in the 90's / early 2000's, I think it's fair to say Baldur's Gate was never that niche. It's just that PC games back then often exerted their influence far beyond raw sales of physical editions. It actually would have been one of the highest selling PC games WW by far at the time.

 

[Scoop]

Honestly I think Nintendo's massive sales this gen have really warped people's idea of what it means to be a big seller. 5 million plus sales for a PC-only game just two weeks after ver 1.0 launch for a series whose last installment was 23 years ago is pretty amazing.

Is it Tears of the Kingdom 10 million in 3 days? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't a huge success.

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be Sony's first party sales. With all of the hype that always surrounds Sony's "prestige" 1st party single player offerings...this is right in line with one of Sony's biggest releases. Without being a first party console game. TLOU 2 sold 10 million, but took 2 years to do so. Horizon Forbidden West sold 8.5 million copies...but took a year to do and launched on both PS4 and PS5. BG3 has been out for two weeks and is PC only.

Elden Ring sold 20 million copies...but it took a year to do so and that game also launched on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, and PS5 in addition to PC. How much has ER sold on PC? Has BG3 already passed ER LTD PC sales?

Final Fantasy 16 shipped 3 million in a week or so. BG3 sold 2.5+ million in 2 weeks.

Point is: Take Nintendo and GTA/COD out of the picture, what is selling significantly bigger then BG3 right now?

 

[Astandahl]

Honestly I think Nintendo's massive sales this gen have really warped people's idea of what it means to be a big seller. 5 million plus sales for a PC-only game just two weeks after ver 1.0 launch for a series whose last installment was 23 years ago is pretty amazing.

Is it Tears of the Kingdom 10 million in 3 days? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't a huge success.

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be Sony's first party sales. With all of the hype that always surrounds Sony's "prestige" 1st party single player offerings...this is right in line with one of Sony's biggest releases. Without being a first party console game. TLOU 2 sold 10 million, but took 2 years to do so. Horizon Forbidden West sold 8.5 million copies...but took a year to do and launched on both PS4 and PS5. BG3 has been out for two weeks and is PC only.

Elden Ring sold 20 million copies...but it took a year to do so and that game also launched on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, and PS5 in addition to PC. How much has ER sold on PC? Has BG3 already passed ER LTD PC sales?

Final Fantasy shipped 3 million in a week or so. BG3 sold 2.5+ million in 2 weeks.

Point is: Take Nintendo and GTA/COD out of the picture, what is selling significantly bigger then BG3 right now?

Also only a few Nintendo games registered way higher sales in the opening week. Moreover, the sales are impacted by the early access business model which clearly reduced the amount of actual sales within the first week. Long story short the game is a colossal success and whoever implies that is not the case doesn't really get what is going on here.

 

[AngryAlchemist]

Honestly I think Nintendo's massive sales this gen have really warped people's idea of what it means to be a big seller.

Since I'm not sure who's post this is aimed at, just to be clear, my previous post was just adding context as to why I can see another user's viewpoint. I'm not saying that I agree with it or that these aren't colossal sales. They definitely are huge (as I said in my post). Either way the game is a huge success.

 

[Koti]

Honestly I think Nintendo's massive sales this gen have really warped people's idea of what it means to be a big seller. 5 million plus sales for a PC-only game just two weeks after ver 1.0 launch for a series whose last installment was 23 years ago is pretty amazing.

Is it Tears of the Kingdom 10 million in 3 days? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't a huge success.

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be Sony's first party sales. With all of the hype that always surrounds Sony's "prestige" 1st party single player offerings...this is right in line with one of Sony's biggest releases. Without being a first party console game. TLOU 2 sold 10 million, but took 2 years to do so. Horizon Forbidden West sold 8.5 million copies...but took a year to do and launched on both PS4 and PS5. BG3 has been out for two weeks and is PC only.

Elden Ring sold 20 million copies...but it took a year to do so and that game also launched on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, and PS5 in addition to PC. How much has ER sold on PC? Has BG3 already passed ER LTD PC sales?

Final Fantasy shipped 3 million in a week or so. BG3 sold 2.5+ million in 2 weeks.

Point is: Take Nintendo and GTA/COD out of the picture, what is selling significantly bigger then BG3 right now?

This is just from a outsider's perspective (me), but I think it's because there were many headlines like "People still buy good games!", "BG3 will sell like crazy, up there with the best selling title in 2023!". Overhyping things typically ends with a disappointing aftermath. In reality, we all knew it was a niche game and topping the Steam charts is a good enough feat.

 

[Damage2]

Having almost 900k peak players and selling less that 3M would be weird tbh

 

[fiendcode]

I'd also like to clarify, BG3 sales are still huge, I expect huge legs thanks to the insane WOM and critical response, and console ports will contribute probably more than expected too. This is absolutely an overwhelming success from every angle and beyond anything Larian could've possibly projected (a lot like BG1-2 were for Bioware tbh).

I just thought after all the headlines, the social media/forum frenzy, and frankly people itt repeatedly comparing it to multiple bigger sellers, I just expected more than 5m at this point. I'm glad we got the actual sales though so everyone can come back to reality and adjust targets accordingly.

 

[Scoop]

Since I'm not sure who's post this is aimed at, just to be clear, my previous post was just adding context as to why I can see another user's viewpoint. I'm not saying that I agree with it or that these aren't colossal sales. They definitely are huge (as I said in my post). Either way the game is a huge success.

Wasn't aimed at anyone directly.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

I don't think the main story of this game is over yet. Just wait for the PS5 launch. I wouldn't be surprised if the PS5 version sells more than FF16.

 

[Tiddums]

To be honest, I kind of see where @fiendcode is coming from. The buzz around the game would make you think it's a smash hit, and it is, but the actual sales since release are closer to ~2.7M then if it's at 5.2M. Still a huge amount, but imagine if every triple A game had 3 years of EA to inflate launch numbers.

Apples to apples is never going to be possible because of the circumstances being so different, but the way I'd think of it is that they've achieved ~5.2 million full price digital sales and counting, which is enviable.

Assuming it is indeed 5.2 currently, then it's believable that before it gets a significant discount it will be at or in excess of 7 million entirely digital sales (I believe Japan is the only region with an announced physical version, coming later). PS5 is coming imminently, it'll still move more copies on PC even as Starfield builds momentum, and then Xbox is somewhere around the end of the year or early next year.

This would not place the game at Zelda: TOTK or Grand Theft Auto tier of sales juggernaut, certainly, but it would put it above, say, Resident Evil 4 Remake where it's sold closer to 5 million copies before going on sale (region dependant; and obviously many copies sold were physical).

 

[AngryAlchemist]

Apples to apples is never going to be possible because of the circumstances being so different, but the way I'd think of it is that they've achieved ~5.2 million full price digital sales and counting, which is enviable.

Assuming it is indeed 5.2 currently, then it's believable that before it gets a significant discount it will be at or in excess of 7 million entirely digital sales (I believe Japan is the only region with an announced physical version, coming later). PS5 is coming imminently, it'll still move more copies on PC even as Starfield builds momentum, and then Xbox is somewhere around the end of the year or early next year.

This would not place the game at Zelda: TOTK or Grand Theft Auto tier of sales juggernaut, certainly, but it would put it above, say, Resident Evil 4 Remake where it's sold closer to 5 million copies before going on sale (region dependant; and obviously many copies sold were physical).

I think the way I see it is that the discussion is a bit mute because Baldur's Gate will have much better legs than your average AAA title anyways given it's staggered launch, it's pretty much launching 3 times, one for EA, one for final release, and one for PS5, plus an eventual Xbox release. Yet at the same time, you can kind of look at it both ways: pre-launch sales definitely ate into its actual launch, but at the same time, I think it's fair to say that it's early access lasting ~3 years also most likely contributed to some sales that it might not get on launch even with all the hype.

Just as an example, let's say that every sale since the marketing started ramping up (so basically, the bear marketing lmao) would be a guaranteed sale day one had EA not existed. Since marketing started hitting viral just a few weeks before launch, so it's unlikely consumer retention would be bad. Even being generous and counting pre-release sales from right before launch, it would take as little as 20% of the total 5.2M for the games launch to be more in line with something like REmake 4, which sold 4 million in 2 weeks. Which, given it's only on one platform and that REmake 4 was a big triple A game, is still huge. But it puts a lot more between Baldur's Gate 3 and being one of the best launches than just GTA/COD/Nintendo, for example.

Coincidentally, Steamspy estimated Baldur's Gate 3's sales as being a million in just one week of it's EA back in 2020 (I know Steamspy isn't concrete but): https://www.thegamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-one-million-copies-sold/
Larian also confirmed right before the marketing started really becoming viral that "Since releasing in Early Access, we’ve been joined by nearly 2 million of you." https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1086940/view/3657534571513526776

To me, getting to 2 million over the course of 3 years gets to a point where it's probably fair to say some of those sales would be lost in translation if EA didn't exist and there was just an initial launch, especially because the gap between initial EA launch sales to 2 million was most likely fairly slow. My point isn't that the launch isn't hugely successful, it is. Just that there's more ways to read the data then "this is a huge launch because Larian already sold 5.2M copies on just the PC and it's now bigger than REmake 4". EA might have hurted launch consolidation, but it also might be inflating the launch total a bit too. So of course it's 2 week launch is bigger than REmake 4's, it isn't a 2 week launch. Of course, we could talk about the PS5 release and how that'd play into an alternate day one launch, we'll have to see how that turns out. I imagine it will be pretty successful. Either way it's kind of a mute point because like you said there's never going to be an apples to apples comparison, all we know is that it was successful.

 

[derby_440]

With continued success on Steam and PS5 release, 10+ million this year is possible at full price. All digital apart from Japan release. Selling 10m+ at full price is very very rare.

RE 4 remake figures are shipped plus digitally sold. Its already discounted. Its going to sell next 5 million at significant discount prices, there is hardly any comparison in terms of revenue generated between both of them.

 

[enpleinjour]

Huge, could see 8-10M by the end of the year. Sony really lucked out getting this as a console exclusive.
Could Larian become the next CDPR? Depends on their appetite for growth.

Honestly I think Nintendo's massive sales this gen have really warped people's idea of what it means to be a big seller. 5 million plus sales for a PC-only game just two weeks after ver 1.0 launch for a series whose last installment was 23 years ago is pretty amazing.

Is it Tears of the Kingdom 10 million in 3 days? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't a huge success.

Not really.

There are many franchises that have outstanding performances, some even yearly, like FIFA, COD and NBA.
GTAV still sells like 15M a year and RDR2 is approaching 60M.

COD used to sell 9M in US NPD launch alone.
We all saw C2077 get 8M in preorders before launch.
We just saw Elden Ring 12M in 2.5 weeks and Hogwarts 12M in 2 weeks.
Oh, Diablo too with 9M in a week.

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be Sony's first party sales. With all of the hype that always surrounds Sony's "prestige" 1st party single player offerings...this is right in line with one of Sony's biggest releases. Without being a first party console game. TLOU 2 sold 10 million, but took 2 years to do so. Horizon Forbidden West sold 8.5 million copies...but took a year to do and launched on both PS4 and PS5. BG3 has been out for two weeks and is PC only.

Sony franchises have a range.
TLOU II sold 4M in 3 days.
GOWR sold 11M in 10 weeks.
Spiderman sold 9M in 10 weeks or so, the sequel should beat that.

Either way, you've fallen trap to the very statement you made at the beginning: its quite rare for a game to sell near 10M in its first year. The IP doing so would automatically make itself as a huge franchise.

Elden Ring sold 20 million copies...but it took a year to do so and that game also launched on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, and PS5 in addition to PC. How much has ER sold on PC? Has BG3 already passed ER LTD PC sales?

Do you know how rare it is for a game to sell 20M in a single year? Let alone 12M in 2.5 weeks?

Point is: Take Nintendo and GTA/COD out of the picture, what is selling significantly bigger then BG3 right now?

Loads of games and Nintendo franchises have a range. Not everything from Nintendo sells like Zelda.

 

[Scoop]

I don't think the main story of this game is over yet. Just wait for the PS5 launch. I wouldn't be surprised if the PS5 version sells more than FF16.

This will come out on Xbox next year as well, and then Nintendo next-gen in 2025-2026 most likely. (D:OS2 is on Switch)

This game is going to be sort of like Witcher 3 where it gets put on everything and eventually achieves enormous sales. (not saying it will reach TW3 sales, it won't)

 

[Remember_spinal]

Huge, could see 8-10M by the end of the year. Sony really lucked out getting this as a console exclusive.
Could Larian become the next CDPR? Depends on their appetite for growth.



Not really.

There are many franchises that have outstanding performances, some even yearly, like FIFA, COD and NBA.
GTAV still sells like 15M a year and RDR2 is approaching 60M.

COD used to sell 9M in US NPD launch alone.
We all saw C2077 get 8M in preorders before launch.
We just saw Elden Ring 12M in 2.5 weeks and Hogwarts 12M in 2 weeks.
Oh, Diablo too with 9M in a week.



Sony franchises have a range.
TLOU II sold 4M in 3 days.
GOWR sold 11M in 10 weeks.
Spiderman sold 9M in 10 weeks or so, the sequel should beat that.

Either way, you've fallen trap to the very statement you made at the beginning: its quite rare for a game to sell near 10M in its first year. The IP doing so would automatically make itself as a huge franchise.



Do you know how rare it is for a game to sell 20M in a single year? Let alone 12M in 2.5 weeks?



Loads of games and Nintendo franchises have a range. Not everything from Nintendo sells like Zelda.

It also helps that now a lot of WRPG’s are locked to Xbox and PC through Microsoft. So a studio like Larian has even more room to shine being on every platform for years to come

 

[Mekanos]

I see this game having legs especially as it comes to more consoles, so 5 million seems like a great success. This kind of WOM is infectious but takes time to build and penetrate more audiences.

 

[salesguy]

Ah, what? BG1 pretty much revitalized the entire CRPG genre in the late 90s, it immediately put Bioware on the map and ended up being Interplay's best selling title ever. It directly spawned a similarly big sequel and several other revered PC RPG series (Icewind Dale, Torment, Neverwinter Nights) and also well a regarded console spinoff series (Dark Alliance).

This is absolutely a legendary brand in the PC space. It may not be as huge as Diablo (at least, outside the west) but there is still significant brand cache here.

man these were the utter glory days of PC gaming. I still remember Baldurs Gate on PC. And around that time was Half Life, and Unreal Tournament (the originals/part 1 in both cases). THOSE were the great days of PC gaming! I'm sure I'm just an old man now, but I dont feel like Pc has "exclusives" like that anymore. It probably does, but they are probably in MOBA genres I dont even follow.

 

[Fularu]

What a crazy performance. I dont think anyone ever expect a niche PC Rpg Ip will suddenly have such huge success there. Larian studios is going to be ordering non stop DoM perignon there for celebration lol.

I’m late but Baldur’s Gate isn’t a niche, obscure PC IP.

The first two games sold a lot (and still do with their enhanced editions) and they’re based on the Forgotten Realms IP (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Baldur’s Gate is a city in that universe) from TSR/Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro

It’s a far more significant « IP » than « The Witcher » was when the games came out.

 

[AruanaRiva]

I’m late but Baldur’s Gate isn’t a niche, obscure PC IP.

The first two games sold a lot (and still do with their enhanced editions) and they’re based on the Forgotten Realms IP (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Baldur’s Gate is a city in that universe) from TSR/Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro

It’s a far more significant « IP » than « The Witcher » was when the games came out.

Tx for the correction there. I know the IP but i never know it is that big lol. I always thought that Divinity is far bigger there than Baldur due to how much positive stuff i heard of Divinity is vs Baldur that feels like just recently it explode in popularity.

 

[uncleoptimus]

Huge props to Larian.

===

Huge, could see 8-10M by the end of the year. Sony really lucked out getting this as a console exclusive.

I wonder if this causes Microsoft to amend their "parity policy" that caused this hit game to be a defacto "timed exclusive" for their competitor?

 

[sixsilum]

Very happy for Larian huge succes, best RPG studio in the industry imo.

 

[Dalthien]

It's great to see BG3 turn into such a success. I absolutely adore the first two games in the series - and they really were a trailblazing force in WRPGs at the time, so it's wonderful to see a successful continuation of such a beloved franchise.

 

[Cantaim]

In a year with a ton of big successes it is always great to see a previously EA success story turn into another success story after its full launch.

 

[nextgeneration]

18 days after this game came out of early access, it's still the #1 best selling game globally, is the #1 best selling game in 22 out of the 29 countries tracked by Steam, and user reviews have just now crossed the 200k mark, with 200,636 user reviews on Steam. The legs and performance of this game in unreal.

 

[awng782]

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to Xbox Series later this year, not 2024. The Series S version won't have split-screen.

 

[Flakster99]

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to Xbox Series later this year, not 2024. The Series S version won't have split-screen.

Well well well, where there's a will, they're a way. Phil and Larian Studios hashed it out.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to Xbox Series later this year, not 2024. The Series S version won't have split-screen.

Interesting precedent for sure. But not much they can do about it, I bet it's quite literally impossible to run co-op on 10 gigs of RAM.

 

[salesguy]

on BG3 and Diablo IV, aren't these isometric CRPG games much more suited for PC? Do we have evidence of them having the capacity to be smash hits on console?

Interesting precedent for sure. But not much they can do about it, I bet it's quite literally impossible to run co-op on 10 gigs of RAM.

But the assets can be lesser because of lower resolution, gfx quality etc saving RAM. The whole thing seems odd to me but whatever. It's like people who talk about FPS being discrete things. No they're just a continuum. Just cut the game back a little more on S. The idea there is some magic resource number that makes anything possible versus not possible just doesnt track. Like, if we had 10.1GB? What about 10.3? is 10.6549 the magic point? LOL. I'm pretty skeptical of Larian here but whatever. I'm Xbox fan who is anti-S, so anything that makes that SKU looks bad and shows MS it is bad idea is OK in my book lol. Just not buying it. If the $ were enough they could put the game on Switch I'm sure.

 

[ILikeFeet]

on BG3 and Diablo IV, aren't these isometric CRPG games much more suited for PC? Do we have evidence of them having the capacity to be smash hits on console?

D3 is a smash hit on consoles, as is D4

BG3 has a dedicated controller UI and camera angle.

 

[Richter Belmont]

Baldur’s Gate II came out 20 years ago these days nobody knows about the series and out of nowhere they pop this amazing game. They have shown to the gaming industry what they can achieve. Baldur’s Gate 4 will be a huge hype if that one comes out. Baldur’s gate III still gotta get released on PS5 and XBOX. This will hit 15-20 million sold eventually

 

[Remember_spinal]

Baldur’s Gate II came out 20 years ago these days nobody knows about the series and out of nowhere they pop this amazing game. They have shown to the gaming industry what they can achieve. Baldur’s Gate 4 will be a huge hype if that one comes out. Baldur’s gate III still gotta get released on PS5 and XBOX. This will hit 15-20 million sold eventually

Anything Larian does next will be huge. They are CDPR status now

 

[Windom Earle]

It's a great success relatively speaking but I'm not feeling quite as bullish as some others here are.

Is this going to be a digital-only release on consoles?

 

[ILikeFeet]

It's a great success relatively speaking but I'm not feeling quite as bullish as some others here are.

Is this going to be a digital-only release on consoles?

The jp ps5 release will be physical

 

[derby_440]

It's a great success relatively speaking but I'm not feeling quite as bullish as some others here are.

Is this going to be a digital-only release on consoles?

Its likely to sell over 10m at near full price by end of the year.

Only Diablo 4, Zelda and Hogwarts did those numbers this year.

 

[fiendcode]

Its likely to sell over 10m at near full price by end of the year.
Only Diablo 4, Zelda and Hogwarts did those numbers this year.

All those did 10m in 2 weeks or less, BG3 likely isn't quite on that level.

This year will have plenty more 10m+ sellers too (CODMW3, EAFC24, NBA2K24, Starfield, Spidey 2, Mario Wonder, possibly RE4, etc)

 

[Vena]

All those did 10m in 2 weeks or less, BG3 likely isn't quite on that level.

This year will have plenty more 10m+ sellers too (CODMW3, EAFC24, NBA2K24, Starfield, Spidey 2, Mario Wonder, possibly RE4, etc)

Rather than a knock on BG3, I'd say this is just a great year.

 

[fiendcode]

Rather than a knock on BG3, I'd say this is just a great year.

Yes, I think it's really a banner year sales wise and i'm not sure if we've ever had this many potential 10m+ sellers within one CY before?

 

[Tiddums]

All those did 10m in 2 weeks or less, BG3 likely isn't quite on that level.

But it's ahead of almost every other game, so that's a huge win. Especially since we seem to be approaching 7 million already around PS5 launch, and at a high ASP.

I don't think people would have predicted this would have outperformed titles like RE4 remake and FF16, which it will have done even at slightly more conservative estimates. A Larian Studios game hanging out in the same rarefied air as Bethesda RPGs is a big deal, even if it doesn't 1:1 match it.

 

[Windom Earle]

It's been close to 5 months since release.

Any data from Larian?

 

[Evilnemesis8]

It's been close to 5 months since release.
Any data from Larian?

Larian doesn't really say how many copies they sell very regularly. I wouldn't expect anything from them.

 

[Guarabyra]

BTW those belgian embassy numbers being discussed were most likely vginsights estimates

PS: I assume it is okay to link other forums here, if not let me know.

 

[Windom Earle]

Larian doesn't really say how many copies they sell very regularly. I wouldn't expect anything from them.

That's a bit odd. You would think a formerly lesser known dev would want to trumpet their triumph from the rooftops to conjure up even more momentum.

Do we have form of tracking on how it's performing on the home consoles in various regions as I have not heard much?

 

[Guarabyra]

That's a bit odd. You would think a formerly lesser known dev would want to trumpet their triumph from the rooftops to conjure up even more momentum.

Do we have form of tracking on how it's performing on the home consoles in various regions as I have not heard much?

Nope, the game has no physical release outside of Japan(yet) and Larian doesn't share data with circana/etc

 

[Evilnemesis8]

That's a bit odd. You would think a formerly lesser known dev would want to trumpet their triumph from the rooftops to conjure up even more momentum.

The only concrete number we have for any of their recent games is 2.5M for D:OS1 from a GDC presentation in 2019.
And for a more general number, we've got Sven back in July 2023 saying this off the cuff :

Q: So while this is going on, Original Sin 2 comes out and does very well. Can you talk about how many copies those two Divinity: Original Sin games have sold?

A: I actually don't know on DOS1. It's a lot. DOS2 is more.

[Laughs] Can you be more specific?

You're going to quote me so I don't want to say a quote which is not true on this.

I want to say, but I'm not sure if it's true, that DOS2 sold three times DOS1. 'Many millions' is the real answer. Enough to sustain something like BG3 and allow us to develop it.

So if he's not completely off base and remembers one of the many meeting he's been in where they talk sales and revenue, that means that D:OS2 has sold around 7.5M-8.0M(at the time of the interview).

Which would easily put D:OS2 as the best selling CRPG of all time, before the arrival of BG3 of course. But I don't think Larian will be too mad to leapfrog their own title.

Do we have form of tracking on how it's performing on the home consoles in various regions as I have not heard much?

The only tracking we have for consoles is PSN monthly downloads for EU/NA with the caveat that it's not the "full picture" as most other releases would have physical copies as well and obviously we really don't have any numbers to really compare from within the list either.

PlayStation Store September
PlayStation Store October
PlayStation Store November

December is probably going to be relatively higher on the list than November due to TGA win and 10% discount during the holidays, but we're only going to get that data in a week or two.


As for Xbox, it came out the day of the TGAs, so that's a fairly new release. All I know is that it was around Top 1-2-3 on the Top paid Xbox lists for US/CA/UK trading blows with MWIII during the first 2 weeks~ of release.
But it's fallen down a bit in recent days at around #5~
A big factor is the fact that there seems to be a pretty prevalent safe file corruption bug on Xbox which they were not able to fix before the holidays. Plenty of folks saying they've lost hours of progress, sometimes multiple times. Considering this is a very lengthy game, that negative WoM probably had an effect on the launch window sales of the game.

 

[ikeiv1]

This has not come up here, I think, but there's actually some interesting data from Hasbro's Q3 earnings (July 1st to Sept 30):

https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-reports-third-quarter-2023-financial-results

As per this data,

• Wizards of the Coast revenue growth driven by the success of licensed digital games Baldur’s Gate III and Monopoly Go! which drove $63 million of incremental revenue in Q3.

• Revenue increase of 40% driven by >100% increase in Digital and Licensed Gaming revenue behind Baldur's Gate III from Larian Studios and to a lesser extent Monopoly Go! from Scopely.

This means Hasbro got, at the very least, $33 million from BGIII royalties (otherwise they wouldn't bother to mention that Monopoly Go! net them less money). Earlier this year, Bank of America estimated Hasbro would get $61 million in royalties if the game sold 10 million copies:

Hasbro is set to rally 41% on strength of Baldur's Gate 3 and its latest hot streak of Magic: The Gathering expansions

Monopoly Go has topped Apple's App Store for the top grossing game, and search interest has surged following its release.

finance.yahoo.com

Which I guess puts royalties per sold copy at around 10%. If we extrapolate these numbers, we get a lower bound of some 5.5 million units sold between July 1st and September 30, of which we know from Swen's Bloomberg interview that 500k were sold as pre-orders during July. This number, of course, assumes full-price sales at 60 USD per copy, but according to Gamalytic at least 20% of the copies sold on Steam were sold in China, Russia and Ukraine for prices ranging from 25 to 40 USD, which I believe would put the actual numbers a bit higher. Then there's the offset for digital deluxe editions (70 USD) as well as PS5 units (70 USD standard, 80 USD deluxe) which would bring the number back down, so I'll stick with the 5.5 for now.

Anyway, Larian had sold 2 million units by the end of June (see tweet below), so that would put the game at 7.5 million units total at the minimum by Sept 30. Early in December some estimates were made by extrapolating the number of people who beat the game using Steam achievement stats and those put the game at around 7.5 by then but I can imagine a lot of players weren't counted due to using mods, so yeah.



I guess the next thing to do would be to guess how much money Hasbro made from Monopoly Go!; I found data estimating Monopoly Go to have made $94 million in September, $115 million in August and $84 million in July, so like $293 million.

The Highest Earning Games in the World

I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning mobile games in the world in September and remember last month's t...

appfigures.com

The Top 10 Highest-Earning Games in The World Brought In more than $500M in July

I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning games, as I do every month, but this time I expanded beyond the US...

appfigures.com

China's Dominance is On Display - The Highest Earning Games in August

I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning mobile games in August, and just like apps, I expanded the ranking...

appfigures.com

Now, if we take 10% of that we would get $29 million of revenue for Hasbro, but unlike BG3, Hasbro gets revenue from Monopoly using a different model and I honestly have no idea how that works:

The revenue for Baldur’s Gate is realized along with unit sales, whereas in the near-term Monopoly Go! has a straight-line revenue recognition based on the total multi-year contract minimum guarantee.

https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/e4ea25ee-9afa-4e94-9467-443df121a4c7

Anyway, I guess we'll know more when Q4 earnings data is released by Hasbro later on but by now the game is probably about to break the 10 million units sold barrier if it hasn't done so already and should keep Larian well funded for its two or three next big projects unless something goes really wrong.

 

[ikeiv1]

According to PC Gamer citing Hasbro, the company made 90 million USD from BG3 in 2023:

Hasbro has made about $90 million by letting Larian make a D&D game

Baldur's Gate 3 has worked out very well for Hasbro

www.pcgamer.com

Going by the napkin math I wrote earlier, the game would have sold somewhere in the ballpark of 15 million units as of Dec. 31, plus whatever units they had sold from 2020 to 2022 in early access (likely 1 to 1.5 million). I seriously doubt Hasbro was getting anywhere close to 20% per unit sold, given their sad state of affairs, but even if they were getting, say, 15%, that would be a solid 10 million without counting 2020-22 EA sales. Units sold are probably a bit higher for either estimate because I'm assuming 60 USD per copy but the game was selling for far less in Russia (20 USD) and China (40 USD) as well as a bunch of other countries.

Anyway, truly a massive success for the folks at Larian, and the game is still selling like hotcakes both on Steam and PSN without them going past a meager 10% discount. Can definitely see this reaching 20 million this year or next and bringing a lot more money in, especially if they do a Switch 2 release.

 

[Mekanos]

15 million sounds about right. It's just weird that they haven't been shouting from the rooftops how many units it's sold.