Black Myth: Wukong has sold 10 million copies across all platforms.

24 Jun 2022
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I would say 2 million minimum on PS5, its #2 in sales only behind Fortnight on PS5.

Nah, it's less than that. I just remembered (well, was reminded by others) that Wukong's also on EGS and WeGame. I know EGS is usually bad for B2P sales, but I wouldn't really discount WeGame. They're owned by TenCent and are a competitor to Steam in China.

So even if they're just the Chinese EGS by default, given the size of the Chinese market plus most of the game's sales being in China (very likely at least 6 million have been in China alone via Steam), they'd take up a decent chunk of the remainder.

I think at least 8 million on Steam is a fair guess, leaving the other 2.7 million between PS5, EGS, and WeGame. EGS probably has the smallest share of that by far, so really it's between PS5 and WeGame. Let's assume it's 250K on EGS; WeGame is probably roughly 3x-4x that. So in total could be 1.25 million between EGS & WeGame.

That'd leave ~ 1.45 - 1.7 million for PS5. Which would likely make sense; most of this game's hype and WOM has been driven by PC & Steam, and in China (where the vast majority of the sales are), PC is the dominant gaming platform. Also there have been no traditional media (television, film trailer, billboard etc.) advertisements for the game on TV and such, which is a big way how games like Spiderman 2 or GOW Ragnarok have been able to make the big 5+ million sales they do in a week or whatnot on PlayStation consoles.
 

quest4441

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So apart from Chinese speaking gamers, we're looking at around 1 million worldwide sales.

And a bunch of those sales are part of Geforce bundle for anyone getting a RTX 4070 and up:



Man I have seen this push across twitter, game journalists and pedoera to make the game seem less of a success than it is. Are chinese gamers not gamers? The lowest CCU for Wukong is the same as Starfield and DD2's peak and they were celebrated as mega successes.

Next time TLoU releases I will be sure to ask how many asian players bought the game
 
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Johnic

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Xbox missing out on the best selling games year after year (BG3 and Wukong now) is something that needs to be studied.
Wondering what it's gonna be next year, because you can be sure as shit games are gonna get even beefier and the Series S will lag behind yet again.
Are you a member of xbox management? Because that name sure fits there. ")
I hope this game's success signals to SIE that they don't need a glut of GAAS to boost their revenue and profits. They just need a very modest amount of (unique) GAAS (1-2 AAA, 1-2 AA) but otherwise focus on their strengths as a single-player story-driven publisher. Tell genuinely awesome and amazing stories with cool characters, devoid of influence from groups like SBI, and build value in them alongside your console & platform.

All of a sudden your "margins" problem on non-GAAS titles would go away; SIE are already chipping away at some other aspects of the equation (i.e big pushes into emerging markets), but GAAS isn't going to be the breadwinner they want them to be, and I think games like Wukong show how their traditional games could easily do that instead.

Hopefully Wukong's success also serves as some inspiration to Western AAA studios & publishers in general, who I think in most cases have gotten both too lazy and too greedy chasing "money-at-all-costs" monetization trends and bandwagoning into GAAS with uninspired slop. The market for quality single-player games never went away; it's just that a lot of Western devs & pubs stopped releasing quality single-player games! So when the sales dropped, they blamed the customer base instead of the declining quality of their own product (like clockwork).

Get back to treating games as a creative medium instead of a gambling business or political soapbox.
Doubt it. But I just don't get it. A high end SP experience from Sony is almost guaranteed to make a crapload of money. So why not stick to those instead of unproven GaaS IPs that most likely will flop.
 

ToTTenTranz

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I would assume it's 10 million including PlayStation.

It all depends on the split then.

I would assume PS5 sales are well over a million considering the ccu.

So I would say 2.5-3 million outside China


What's making you assume the PS5 sales don't have similar proportions in China?



I doubt it's much more than a million outside China + Hong Kong. Definitely not 2 million, at least not until/if word of mouth kicks in and western gamers sweep in.




Man I have seen this push across twitter, game journalists and pedoera to make the game seem less of a success than it is.
Why would it be less of a success because 90% of the gamers are from China?
 

ToTTenTranz

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TIL I learnt 600k ccu is low

You're missing the context on what is claimed to be low.

In terms of PC vs. console proportion, having only 20% of players on console is indeed very low. Most cross-platform games have >50% players on console.



Well that is the narrative they are trying to push for "reasons" we can probably imagine lol
I don't care for the stupid "lack of inclusion" reasons they're presenting, but it's unrealistic to assume this game would have had even remotely similar success if it wasn't a Chinese cultural phenomenon.

It sold less than a million in Europe + USA + Japan + Korea which is where most of the market for high profile single player games come from.


Don't get me wrong, it's a massive success and the devs/publisher found an impressive untapped market. It's just not a success that you can replicate with a western, Japanese or Korean developer.
 
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Gediminas

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Why would it be less of a success because 90% of the gamers are from China?
yeah, i don't get it either. is their 60/70$ is less than western 60/70$? is they are less of a gamers than westernies?

TIL I learnt 600k ccu is low
600k ccu is like 3x sold copies. to sell close to 2M is bad somehow? how?
oh, yeah, it is PS numbers, then automatically is bad :D
 

quest4441

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You're missing the context on what is claimed to be low.

In terms of PC vs. console proportion, having only 20% of players on console is indeed very low. Most cross-platform games have >50% players on console.
That maybe the case but 600k is nothing to scoff at, ubisoft will kill to have that many players across all platforms playing their game day1
 

Gediminas

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That maybe the case but 600k is nothing to scoff at, ubisoft will kill to have that many players across all platforms playing their game day1
probably 99,99 devs would, except very few, like GTA base, God of War and some indie trash on switch.
 

saltyashell

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Well that is the narrative they are trying to push for "reasons" we can probably imagine lol
It's a bizarre narrative given that every console executive would gleefully give up their first born children if they could establish a strong consumer base in China. Capturing the Chinese console market would be the one thing that might have a chance of saving Xbox, but from the looks of it there's no chance of that happening.
 
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quest4441

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You're missing the context on what is claimed to be low.

In terms of PC vs. console proportion, having only 20% of players on console is indeed very low. Most cross-platform games have >50% players on console.




I don't care for the stupid "lack of inclusion" reasons they're presenting, but it's unrealistic to assume this game would have had even remotely similar success if it wasn't a Chinese cultural phenomenon.

It sold less than a million in Europe + USA + Japan + Korea which is where most of the market for high profile single player games come from.


Don't get me wrong, it's a massive success and the devs/publisher found an impressive untapped market. It's just not a success that you can replicate with a western, Japanese or Korean developer.
I can give easily give examples where Korea can easily replicate this success, They make a game based on Kingdom (watch it on netflix if you havent), make a game based on Yi Sun Shin( he was an admiral during the 1500's and the guy is a national hero). Same goes for europe, they can find the next witcher if they put effort.
Pearl abyss is making DokeV which will be a sensation if they pull of what they showed in the trailer.

The point is there is a shit ton of material to make smash hit games you just have to go look for it and be faithful to the source unlike the lazy western AAA industry which frankly wants to coast on copy paste bloat year after year.
 

arvfab

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Nah, it's less than that. I just remembered (well, was reminded by others) that Wukong's also on EGS and WeGame. I know EGS is usually bad for B2P sales, but I wouldn't really discount WeGame. They're owned by TenCent and are a competitor to Steam in China.

So even if they're just the Chinese EGS by default, given the size of the Chinese market plus most of the game's sales being in China (very likely at least 6 million have been in China alone via Steam), they'd take up a decent chunk of the remainder.

I think at least 8 million on Steam is a fair guess, leaving the other 2.7 million between PS5, EGS, and WeGame. EGS probably has the smallest share of that by far, so really it's between PS5 and WeGame. Let's assume it's 250K on EGS; WeGame is probably roughly 3x-4x that. So in total could be 1.25 million between EGS & WeGame.

That'd leave ~ 1.45 - 1.7 million for PS5. Which would likely make sense; most of this game's hype and WOM has been driven by PC & Steam, and in China (where the vast majority of the sales are), PC is the dominant gaming platform. Also there have been no traditional media (television, film trailer, billboard etc.) advertisements for the game on TV and such, which is a big way how games like Spiderman 2 or GOW Ragnarok have been able to make the big 5+ million sales they do in a week or whatnot on PlayStation consoles.

And it's without a physical release on PS5. People are waiting for it.
 

RE4-City

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Is it me or do these surprise hits coming out of nowhere seem to more and more of a common thing in the past few years?
Maybe it's just because I'm approaching mid life and don't pay attention to everything gaming related but this, Hell Divers II and Baldur's Gate 3 taking over the gaming sphere for a bit seem to me to come of nowhere from my prospective.
Even Elden ring and Monster Hunter World exploding like they did was at one time a laughable thought. especially Monster Hunter World which people thought would be lucky to sell 2 million at most