The Last of Us Part II has sold over 10M units as of Spring 2022

[cw_sasuke]

Eh, like others have said, I don’t really think thats the case. I think maybe during the original Uncharted trilogy Naughty Dog may have been the top seller, but it hasn’t been that way for years now. Since the PS4 all of Sony’s big single player games clear 10m easily, and it’s usually through increased marketing/bundles.

Thats what we are talking about the status quo of perception until it wasnt the case anymore. Its a whole other discussion if TLOU2 sells 10m in its first year or +15m 2 years after launch but we needed to see the TLOU2 result to be able to back up that claim. The late PS4 games from other devs benefited from a large PS4 install base and bundles, so expectations were higher for TLOU2 releasing under the circumstances.

To your second paragraph, no one is disagreeing on this one literally saying that they are delivering the most important first party output among other Top Sony devs - just sales wise they arent in their own world anymore.

 

[epicene101]

I think the sentence I have bolded speak for themselves.

I agree. It is what it is.

 

[fiendcode]

I think ND is still PlayStation's critical darling. Insomniac is their real commercial star now though, even if it's license dependant.

 

[enpleinjour]

There are much more fitting games that can and should be compared to TLOU2s performance. Mostly on Sonys own first party front people were hyping up TLOU2 as a game that would the other Sony games in the dust sales wise, based on the 20m sales that kept bring brought up. Naughty Dog magics + over 100m PS4 consoles sold resulted in some very high expectations.

In the end the sales were much closer to other high caliber Sony Story focused games that people expected. GoT, GoW, Spiderman etc. in terms of sales Naughty Dog has lost their position as the Sony top dog. The sales are still great but the perception changed imo.

Not with UC4 selling 20M, TLOU selling 20M, TLOU II will end up 15M+ (unless the new TLOU SP game cuts its legs off), and I am pretty confident that TLOU Factions is going to be Sony's biggest MP title.

This isn't even accounting for their near unparalleled quality and critical reception. 4 GOTY games is second to none in the world.

Insomniac, which to be honest always stood next to ND, has finally met their sales and output quality. Insomniac may even surpass ND with how many games they put out.

 

[Remember_spinal]

I think it is important to note that The Last of Us 2 outsold spider-man out the gate. As of now it’s still the highest (fastest?) selling original IP on playstation and the only reason it hasn’t outpaced the original is the lack of a remaster and bundles. Ghost of Tsushima was celebrated as a break out hit at 8m units and thats with a multiplayer mode and a next gen remaster. The Last of Us 2 still outpaced it as a shorter single player only game with one sku.

I think there is a reason Sony is making their first big service game a big budget TLOU spinoff. I don’t see any other Sony IP being a bigger draw than that.

 

[cw_sasuke]

Not with UC4 selling 20M, TLOU selling 20M, TLOU II will end up 15M+ (unless the new TLOU SP game cuts its legs off), and I am pretty confident that TLOU Factions is going to be Sony's biggest MP title.

This isn't even accounting for their near unparalleled quality and critical reception. 4 GOTY games is second to none in the world.

Insomniac, which to be honest always stood next to ND, has finally met their sales and output quality. Insomniac may even surpass ND with how many games they put out.

You are pretty much bringing up the reasons why people had the highest of expectations for TLOU2 in terms of sales. Dont see why you are including critical reception or quality into this, since no one is questioning the quality of the games, just talking about sales expectations pre-release.

TLOU2 sales, despite the strong launch, in the end were much closer to other Sony games like Horizon, Spiderman, GoT, GoW 2018 and even something like Days Gone. When large parts of the audience expected it to just blast through all of them outside of maybe Spiderman.

This obv. doesnt mean that ND isnt still one if not Sony most critically acclaimed Studio - just saying in terms of the sales of their last released project the big sales gap to other big projects wasnt there.

 

[enpleinjour]

TLOU2 sales, despite the strong launch, in the end were much closer to other Sony games like Horizon, Spiderman, GoT, GoW 2018 and even something like Days Gone. When large parts of the audience expected it to just blast through all of them outside of maybe Spiderman.

We never got official Days Gone numbers that show it being anywhere close to TLOUII.
TLOUII is only behind SM, GoW, UC4. I would say ideally it would be up there with GoW. It's not too far behind.
It was never going to match SM, people who expected that might not have been paying attention to SM sales.

Dont see why you are including critical reception or quality into this, since no one is questioning the quality of the games, just talking about sales expectations pre-release.

You were talking about perception. ND is still at the top of their game. I would say GG, Insomniac, SSM, SP have greatly increased their perception on the games they are capable of making and sales, rather than ND losing their place.

 

[Remember_spinal]

You were talking about perception. ND is still at the top of their game. I would say GG, Insomniac, SSM, SP have greatly increased their perception on the games they are capable of making and sales, rather than ND losing their place.

Yeah, i think this is the main take away from this discussion. Which is why i mentioned that it seemed like after the Uncharted trilogy and TLOU that ND were in a league of their own. I think the truth is that there has been a soft cap on sales for sonys 1st party titles and what we’re seeing are their other premier 1st party studios slowly catching up or slightly nudging past them.

I think this is why sony is focusing on growth with PC, Mobile, and GAAS. They probably know they are not going to do pokemon numbers with their games on console, for any franchise. They can however get more studios into that 3-4 million first week, 10 million 2 year, and 20 million lifetime bracket more consistently.

For example, Returnal has probably done maybe 1.5 million, which is far more than any of their previous games, and by the time Housemarque makes another game it will end up doing that week one, maybe twice as much with PC and the larger install base. there may be a time where smaller studios like london, pixelopus, bluepoint, media molecule also get to that point, maybe this generation.

I think Naughty Dog hit their single player sales ceiling early and set the standard and most the other game studios are now slowly hitting theirs. Spider-man maybe be the outlier since its one of the biggest IP in the world outside of gaming.

….also, maybe im completely wrong and sonys tv/movie initiative takes off and those IP all expand like spider-man has which increases the sales ceiling for their games.

 

[cw_sasuke]

We never got official Days Gone numbers that show it being anywhere close to TLOUII.
TLOUII is only behind SM, GoW, UC4. I would say ideally it would be up there with GoW. It's not too far behind.
It was never going to match SM, people who expected that might not have been paying attention to SM sales.



You were talking about perception. ND is still at the top of their game. I would say GG, Insomniac, SSM, SP have greatly increased their perception on the games they are capable of making and sales, rather than ND losing their place.

I said the sales level were closer, not close - especially when talking about DG.
We are talking about sales. The perception that a ND game just gonna outperform other Sony games has changed, not that they arent considered a top studio anymore.

 

[Remember_spinal]

I said the sales level were closer, not close - especially when talking about DG.
We are talking about sales. The perception that a ND game just gonna outperform other Sony games has changed, not that they arent considered a top studio anymore.

I think the perception with Naughty Dog games, but particularly The Last of Us franchise is that is has a very high floor. the multiplayer and the show will probably increase it, but I honestly believe a lot of people thought (and still do think) it did really bad sales wise. The fact that it did 10 million in 1.5 years and people still see that as a failure or slightly underwhelming is already a success within itself. From reading this thread it feels like 10 milllion was the floor.

That is a huge milestone number for most 3rd party single player games. Take Nintendo out of the equation and that is the top percentile of games sales that don’t have mtx or DLC

 

[Astrogamer]

Not with UC4 selling 20M, TLOU selling 20M, TLOU II will end up 15M+ (unless the new TLOU SP game cuts its legs off), and I am pretty confident that TLOU Factions is going to be Sony's biggest MP title.

This isn't even accounting for their near unparalleled quality and critical reception. 4 GOTY games is second to none in the world.

Insomniac, which to be honest always stood next to ND, has finally met their sales and output quality. Insomniac may even surpass ND with how many games they put out.

Just to be clear, assuming no PC version, special PS5 Remaster or bundling, under the current sales trajectory of TLOU2, 15M+ would take over 5 years under very generous estimates. A very basic log trendline of the two datapoints we have suggests it would end up around 13 million 8 years from now.

 

[cw_sasuke]

I think the perception with Naughty Dog games, but particularly The Last of Us franchise is that is has a very high floor. the multiplayer and the show will probably increase it, but I honestly believe a lot of people thought (and still do think) it did really bad sales wise. The fact that it did 10 million in 1.5 years and people still see that as a failure or slightly underwhelming is already a success within itself. From reading this thread it feels like 10 milllion was the floor.

That is a huge milestone number for most 3rd party single player games. Take Nintendo out of the equation and that is the top percentile of games sales that don’t have mtx or DLC

There is a reason why im talking about sales expectations pre-release. Ofc a certain picture was painted when we didnt recieve any sales updates after the big initial launch and i saw the game getting price slashed relatively soon at retailers, when GoT managed to hold on to its pricing levels much longer.

The sales are great, i dont think there are more than a handful studios out there that could deliver such a game and have it sell +10m on a single plattform. Look what RE Village sold on 5 plattforms and its one of the biggest series in gaming.

The audience, us included, having too high of expectations based on hype, past sales, developer pedigree etc. is something that happens all the time. Their are these rare cases where obvious success stories get still a somewhat tame reaction when sales are revealed because of how ridiculous high expectations were pre-release. TLOU Part 2 is def. such a case.

TLOU2 is pretty much showing us right now what the sales ceiling is for a game sequel with such heavy story focus and mature/brutal content. Its a tougher sell than most of us realized pre launch. Other genres have it easier in terms of just releasing a bigger and better sequel and get more sales.

 

[Remember_spinal]

Just to be clear, assuming no PC version, special PS5 Remaster or bundling, under the current sales trajectory of TLOU2, 15M+ would take over 5 years under very generous estimates. A very basic log trendline of the two datapoints we have suggests it would end up around 13 million 8 years from now.

Which is probably in line with the original minus all those things as well

 

[Remember_spinal]

There is a reason why im talking about sales expectations pre-release. Ofc a certain picture was painted when we didnt recieve any sales updates after the big initial launch and i saw the game getting price slashed relatively soon at retailers, when GoT managed to hold on to its pricing levels much longer.

The sales are great, i dont think there are more than a handful studios out there that could deliver such a game and have it sell +10m on a single plattform. Look what RE Village sold on 5 plattforms and its one of the biggest series in gaming.

The audience, us included, having too high of expectations based on hype, past sales, developer pedigree etc. is something that happens all the time. Their are these rare cases where obvious success stories get still a somewhat tame reaction when sales are revealed because of how ridiculous high expectations were pre-release. TLOU Part 2 is def. such a case.

TLOU2 is pretty much showing us right now what the sales ceiling is for a game sequel with such heavy story focus and mature/brutal content. Its a tougher sell than most of us realized pre launch. Other genres have it easier in terms of just releasing a bigger and better sequel and get more sales.

I kind of think its just the sales ceiling for Sony’s first party games in general, despite the content, controversy, reception, etc.

This is right in line with spider-man, God of War, Uncharted, TLOU1. Once Sony starts doing its usual remaster/bundle extension of marketing it will most likely fall in line with the former.

I think the difference between Ghost of Tsushima and TLOU2 was Sony continuing to stretch the Tsushima success with the multiplayer and lead directly into the remaster, versus TLOU where they knew they were gonna make up the sales further down the line because they have the remake and tv show to promote with it.

Theres a reason sony hasn’t included it in the PS Plus extra/premium tier but put Tsushima in there.

 

[cw_sasuke]

I kind of think its just the sales ceiling for Sony’s first party games in general, despite the content, controversy, reception, etc.

This is right in line with spider-man, God of War, Uncharted, TLOU1. Once Sony starts doing its usual remaster/bundle extension of marketing it will most likely fall in line with the former.

I think the difference between Ghost of Tsushima and TLOU2 was Sony continuing to stretch the Tsushima success with the multiplayer and lead directly into the remaster, versus TLOU where they knew they were gonna make up the sales further down the line because they have the remake and tv show to promote with it.

Theres a reason sony hasn’t included it in the PS Plus extra/premium tier but put Tsushima in there.

I think the sales ceiling for story heavy sequels and games with the realistic portrayal of brutality ala TLOU Part 2 is lower than for games like GoW, GoT, Spiderman and Uncharted.

An even more realistic and brutal single player Part 3 would probably continue the trend and have lower sales expectations for me, compared to a new Uncharted games by ND for example. Assuming they continue the story and dont start something completely new.

I dont see what else ND or Sony could have done for this kind of game to perform much better.

 

[Remember_spinal]

think the sales ceiling for story heavy sequels and games with the realistic portrayal of brutality ala TLOU Part 2 is lower than for games like GoW, GoT, Spiderman and Uncharted.

I don’t disagree that Naughty Dog making the games increasingly more violent and dark in subject matters are pushing it further into a niche. I think at this point the audience that are invested in this franchise either through the first game or the eventual tv show aren’t gonna be the same that buy it day 1.

I also don’t think sales wise its that far off from god of war or uncharted either. I think the Teen rated games will have a slightly higher ceiling than what TLOU single player games are turning into. I think what few million in sales it will lack in, it will make up for in critical reception and possibly console and cross-media sales.

It does make me wonder if and when other Mature rated Sony games catch up with Naughty Dog in terms of tech if they will also begin to enter into that niche barrier. Ghost of Tsushima for example is very violent, but it’s not as realistic as TLOU, i think if Ghost 2 looks more like TLOU2 it could start to veer that way.

God of War sold 19.5 million copies in 4 years. TLOU2 sold 10 million in 1.5 years.

TLOU2 and God of War will most likely cross streams at one point.

 

[m051293]

What were GOW/SM sales after 1.5-2 years?

TLOU2 sold 4-4.5M in it's opening weekend (3 days), then 5.5-6M in the 21 months following that (07 2020 - 03 2022?).

Do we have any metrics from a similar timeframe for the other heavy hitters? It does seem a bit muted after that huge launch, but that's just an impression, not data based.

 

[Remember_spinal]

What were GOW/SM sales after 1.5-2 years?

TLOU2 sold 4-4.5M in it's opening weekend (3 days), then 5.5-6M in the 21 months following that (07 2020 - 03 2022?).

Do we have any metrics from a similar timeframe for the other heavy hitters? It does seem a bit muted after that huge launch, but that's just an impression, not data based.

I’m sure there are people here with far better data than I but God of War was 10 million in a little over a year, which means its just slightly outpacing TLOU2

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/console/-i-god-of-war-i-has-sold-10-million-copies#:~:text=Newsbrief%3A%20Sony%20Santa%20Monica's%20God,PlayStation's%20next%2Dgeneration%20platform%20goals.

It’s a sizable milestone, and one that other Sony flagship games like Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us have also reached in their lifetime. Back in 2018, God of War managed to sell 3.1 million copies in just its first three days on shelves, and, according to Sony's data, has now managed to surpass its predecessor God of War 3 in lifetime sales as well.

1.1 years for God of War, with bundles.

1.5 for TLOU2 without.

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Spider-man is in a league of it’s own, i think it sold 9m+ copies in just a couple of months.

Edit—-

Also, important to note that God of War had far less competition when it came out. It released in April 2018, the next biggest game was Spider-man in September and Red Dead Redemption in October.

TLOU released a month before Ghost of Tsushima came out and right before the hype of the PS5 and that launch line up started in September.

 

[enpleinjour]

Yeah, i think this is the main take away from this discussion. Which is why i mentioned that it seemed like after the Uncharted trilogy and TLOU that ND were in a league of their own. I think the truth is that there has been a soft cap on sales for sonys 1st party titles and what we’re seeing are their other premier 1st party studios slowly catching up or slightly nudging past them.

I think this is why sony is focusing on growth with PC, Mobile, and GAAS. They probably know they are not going to do pokemon numbers with their games on console, for any franchise. They can however get more studios into that 3-4 million first week, 10 million 2 year, and 20 million lifetime bracket more consistently.

For example, Returnal has probably done maybe 1.5 million, which is far more than any of their previous games, and by the time Housemarque makes another game it will end up doing that week one, maybe twice as much with PC and the larger install base. there may be a time where smaller studios like london, pixelopus, bluepoint, media molecule also get to that point, maybe this generation.

I think Naughty Dog hit their single player sales ceiling early and set the standard and most the other game studios are now slowly hitting theirs. Spider-man maybe be the outlier since its one of the biggest IP in the world outside of gaming.

….also, maybe im completely wrong and sonys tv/movie initiative takes off and those IP all expand like spider-man has which increases the sales ceiling for their games.

You're pretty much on the spot. Sony's exclusives are already the top selling games on Playstation.
With 4 games 20M+ : SM, SM spin off, GoW, UC
4 possible games ~15M: TLOU II, Ghost, HFW, Wolverine

They have already hit the caps of their platform. The only games that sell more than Playstation Studio on Playstation are games that sell 35M+ in total. Even COD likely only sells 18-20M on Playstation.

As a result, they are focusing on increasing brand value, diversity and output. Higher priced games for more rev/profit, huge growth in teams for more games, areas like VR and GaaS for diversity and PC ports for increased brand recognition.

I said the sales level were closer, not close - especially when talking about DG.
We are talking about sales. The perception that a ND game just gonna outperform other Sony games has changed, not that they arent considered a top studio anymore.

I don't think we ever got DG's sales from Sony ???

Just to be clear, assuming no PC version, special PS5 Remaster or bundling, under the current sales trajectory of TLOU2, 15M+ would take over 5 years under very generous estimates. A very basic log trendline of the two datapoints we have suggests it would end up around 13 million 8 years from now.

You would need a lot more data to have an accurate trendline. HZD and TLOU are both behind TLOU II and have both reached 20M.

 

[Remember_spinal]

Imo the only way TLOU2 doesn’t do at least 15m is if Sony gives it the Sackboy/Destruction All Stars treatment and just completely disregards it’s existence.

But it’s omission from PS Plus only indicates Sony has another marketing cycle planned for it

 

[BoktaiFan]

For example, Returnal has probably done maybe 1.5 million

Returnal's last numbers were 560K FYI

I doubt they tripled that in a year tbh

PlayStation 5 Surpasses 10 Million Units Sold, Remains the Fastest Selling Console in Sony Interactive Entertainment History

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that its newest generation game console, PlayStation®5 (PS5™), has sold through more than 10 million un

www.businesswire.com

 

[Remember_spinal]

Returnal's last numbers were 560K FYI

I doubt they tripled that in a year tbh

PlayStation 5 Surpasses 10 Million Units Sold, Remains the Fastest Selling Console in Sony Interactive Entertainment History

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that its newest generation game console, PlayStation®5 (PS5™), has sold through more than 10 million un

www.businesswire.com

560k was reported in 3 months, with an install base of 10 million. Its not hard to believe it tripled that

 

[BoktaiFan]

560k was reported in 3 months, with an install base of 10 million. Its not hard to believe it tripled that

I mean it's not exactly the type of game I would expect to have a long tail. Additionally it hasn't ranked on any charts since launch so I think it's a pretty big stretch.

Look at a game like Metroid dread for example. There is no way that's going to triple its launch sales.

 

[GhostLegend12]

Pretty much every game that reaches 20M+ has been bundled on point in time, especially if its first party. Unless you have further data between bundled/sales split its a moot point.

The only official data from Sony showed that bundled sales account for <10% of software sold in FY19.

Even though we don't have the exact figures, we know God of War was bundled within the first year of its release. It could have taken more than 13 months to reach 10 million copies sold and this is one of the best selling PlayStation exclusives ever. So I don't really see why people were expecting way more than 10 million copies sold from The Last of Us Part II.