HOGWARTS LEGACY sold 22 million copies in 2023: WB Games

[Tokuiten]

I'm really curious to see whether the success of this title will effect WB's look at the LOTR IP. There's a big fanbase hungering for a proper LOTR game, but what exactly that game would be, I don't know.

To me, the Middle-Earth games really missed the mark in what a title in that universe should be. Where their primary focus was on combat, I would prefer a title, much like Hogwarts, where the main draw is exploration and adventure.

That would be amazing, a LotR-game that's half immersive sim like Hogwarts Legacy. Primary issue I see is that LotR doesn't have that one location that you can focus on for a game and making all of middleearth into the game is either impossible, will be awkwardly condensed, or be super barren without the details that made exploring Hogwarts castle so great. Do you have an idea for that problem?

 

[Adventureracing]

That would be amazing, a LotR-game that's half immersive sim like Hogwarts Legacy. Primary issue I see is that LotR doesn't have that one location that you can focus on for a game and making all of middleearth into the game is either impossible, will be awkwardly condensed, or be super barren without the details that made exploring Hogwarts castle so great. Do you have an idea for that problem?

That kinda sounds like most open world games on the market to me and they seem to do just fine.

 

[Dinjooh]

That would be amazing, a LotR-game that's half immersive sim like Hogwarts Legacy. Primary issue I see is that LotR doesn't have that one location that you can focus on for a game and making all of middleearth into the game is either impossible, will be awkwardly condensed, or be super barren without the details that made exploring Hogwarts castle so great. Do you have an idea for that problem?

I had the very same talk with my partner yesterday. I do believe the details and scope of Hogwarts is such a key element to it's success; if they had increased the size, but lowered the density I don't think it would've worked as well.

Now how you do that in LOTR without increasing the scope to an insane degree. Some of the most iconic locales are places such as Minas Tirith and The Shire, but.. making games solely revolving them? Hard to imagine.

 

[Vena]

I feel like a LOTR game would be better served from a Larian-style game with a lot of lore. It's also the sort of high fantasy that lends itself to turn-based game design that Larian is quite adept at designing.

 

[Belthazar]

I feel like a LOTR game would be better served from a Larian-style game with a lot of lore. It's also the sort of high fantasy that lends itself to turn-based game design that Larian is quite adept at designing.

Yeah, agreed. Also, with their usual 3 act structure they could cover a lot of the iconic places on Middle Earth. Also, would be kind neat to see what kinds of systems and mechanics they would come up with based on the LOTR lore.

 

[Tokuiten]

A "Larian-style game" wouldn't be exactly easy/cheap to make either, eh?

I think what could be incredible, but unlikey, is to make a series of LotR-games that add onto each other. Basically WB would announce a "Lord of the Rings: The Shire"-game, then next year "Lord of the Rings: Rivendell", then the year after "Lord of the Rings: Rohan", and so on. The "twist" would be that you can stack each new game onto the previous, so the ingame-world seamlessly grows bigger as WB adds more games. So, focus on one area for maximum details, but still a vast world over time. Will never happen, but one can dream ;>

That kinda sounds like most open world games on the market to me and they seem to do just fine.

Hogwarts Legacy isn't like "most open world games", that's the point.

 

[RaymondBryce]

A "Larian-style game" wouldn't be exactly easy/cheap to make either, eh?

I think what could be incredible, but unlikey, is to make a series of LotR-games that add onto each other. Basically WB would announce a "Lord of the Rings: The Shire"-game, then next year "Lord of the Rings: Rivendell", then the year after "Lord of the Rings: Rohan", and so on. The "twist" would be that you can stack each new game onto the previous, so the ingame-world seamlessly grows bigger as WB adds more games. So, focus on one area for maximum details, but still a vast world over time. Will never happen, but one can dream ;>

Hogwarts Legacy isn't like "most open world games", that's the point.

If I remember correctly, that is pretty much exactly what the MMO did.

 

[Cantaim]

I felt like the game could be a big hit considering the developer. But I never imagined this level of success. A shame it's attached to the IP it is attached to considering the problems.

 

[epicene101]

Excellent numbers.

Shipped and sell-through aren’t that dramatically different, especially with Nintendo lol. They (usually) eventually sell what they’ve shipped. Hogwarts Legacy: 22M in its 1st year ( with a head start & multi-platform reach) vs TOTK: 19-20M (sell-through).

Both are impressive.

 

[Tiddums]

A "Larian-style game" wouldn't be exactly easy/cheap to make either, eh?

Definitely not; the company had 450 staff in 2023 and still used external partners to deliver the game. At the start of development it was <200 staff, we might suggest that over the lifetime of the project it was doing something like ~275 Full Time Equivalents for about 5.5 years.

Depending on exact wages and overhead costs, I'd speculate somewhere in the 160-220 million USD budget, which is upper echelon AAA stuff. It's not GTA, but it's up there with Sony's AAA projects.

Larian talked about how scary the project was on account of how much they were spending on it. This is for good reason. They were in uncharted territories making a game of that type with such a high budget, usually reserved only for proven, safe genres.