Hogwarts Legacy Conjures a Staggering 22 Million Sales

Was a good game, plenty of room for improvement though, i look forward to doing year 6 in the sequel

Well deserved. The budget for the next one will be ridiculous.

It's high on my list for when I finally get a PS5. Love me some Harry Potter 🦉🧙‍♂️

This is one I would LOVE to know % by platform, beyond Sony that should be very pleased getting the marketing rights, knowing how many people got it for ps4, one and Switch would be great.

Takes a lot to beat out TOTK as the best selling game of 2023 - very impressed.

@PixelDragon It would have sold 22,000,006 copies if not for the boycott.

Well deserved, the game is in my top 10 games of 2023.

That's a lot of wizards

Tears of the Kingdom had sold 19.5 million copies by September 2023. I’m really surprised that it could not sell 3 million more during the holiday months for the title of best selling game of the year.

My biggest letdown of 2023, together with Starfield but yeah, it's Harry Potter, not surprised

Just makes websites like Eurogamer look even more stupid than they've become for their stance on this game. No wonder they're getting sold. Well done PS for your reasonable coverage 👍

This doesn't surprise me. It wasn't a game of the year but IMO it was vibrant and charming - if a little bit shallow overall. Hopefully the inevitable sequel builds and improves on the experience

Really enjoyed the game, glad to see something other than Cod taking first place.

Tears of the Kingdom sales are still more impressive when you consider they were all on a single platform.

Well deserved I really enjoyed my time with it. I’ll be there for a sequel

@Stevemalkpus

One of the most prestigious, important and beloved Nintendo franchises selling 19 million is expected, especially when 132 millions Switches have been sold. It is not more impressive than a brand new IP selling even more.

Well deserved wonderful game and absolutely nailed the source material can't wait for an inevitable sequel and hopefully the awesome Madam Kagowa convinces that A-hat Headmaster to let us play Quidditch next time 😅

Was a really good game. The setting was captured brilliantly and it had some really good ideas. I think the story could have used more work and there are loads of areas for development (greater enemy variety, quidditch etc) - but as a first attempt it was a fantastic attempt to deliver a game that many of us had waited years to play

Richly deserved.

@riceNpea. I wouldn’t exactly call Hogwarts “a brand new IP”. And 132 million Switch consoles is still dwarfed by the over 500 million copies of Harry Potter books sold.

This is the very rare time I'm extremely happy a game I strongly disliked was incredibly successful.

Well deserved. I had a blast with it, so much so that it made its way into my top five last year. I’m even considering grabbing it again for Steam Deck.

Next game won't even do half of that, so many people got bored fast.

@Stevemalkpus if you need to conflate the issue to prove a point your point must be weak. I didn't realise all those books came with a free console.

Erm, yes it captures the setting and good to do whatever you want but very clunky, choppy, 4k frame rate is not good and stiff character animations. If they made it with a proper new game engine for current gen models it would be much better

@Pixeldragon

I read your comment and I agree👍

Brilliant game and I do agree that there is a lot more that they could have done to flesh the game out more but what a base foundation to start to build upon. Maybe use the unreal 5 engine next time out.

I'm not surprised it's been such a hit. By all accounts it's a solid, if not spectacular, open world game based on one of the most popular IPs in the world. It also has a great baked in premise of going to a magical school.

I'll admit to even wanting to check it out myself, but between JK and general open world fatigue, along with HP fatigue, I just don't think I care much.

@riceNpea Eh, disagree.

Said beloved property was only clearing 5 - 10 million lifetime per entry prior to BotW.

Harry Potter is a much bigger brand than Zelda.

Most of all, TotK is an exclusive to one platform, whereas HL is on pretty much everything, and enjoyed a second launch period with the last-gen and Switch ports.

Also, it has been discounted heavily near the end of the year, whereas TotK hasn't really enjoyed this treatment AFAIK unless you count vouchers.

It's a solid 8/10, but it was a disappointment for me considering the expectations I had. There's not one thing I can point to exactly, it's more like I just had no motivation to continue playing it once I finished the main story. I usually try to Platium a game if I'm having a lot of fun with it, but with HL I haven't touched it once since I finished the story almost a year ago, and have had zero interest in going back to it. Baldur's Gate 3 ended up hitting me the way I thought HL was going to.

@Ralizah good points that I take into consideration. I give Hogwarts more credit though as Zelda didn't have swathes of the gaming media behaving like activists, boycotting the game and propagandising against it.

Thoroughly deserved.

Predicting 30 mill by end of 2024

Impressive. I bought it a while back but still not played it yet!

Lots of folks in here not realizing Tears of the Kingdom is only on Switch while Hogwarts Legacy is on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC.

I was one of those December sales. It was half off and I knew I would play it soon. My wife and daughter love Harry Potter, so I can't really escape it.

@riceNpea tbh I think the campaign against HL only helped it sales-wise. Controversy sells.

One of many strategic issues from people who didn't want the game to sell well.

It's a fun game. I hadn't felt the same type of magic in this game since the first Harry Potter game on ps1. Which is saying something.

@Ralizah It's not so much the controversy as Harry Potter is already a household name with most of their games in the past being well received.

It's easy to assume the loud voices off twitter would track globally when most people in real life aren't even aware of Rowling's issues. Other than HP fans, multiple generations of parents will buy a Harry Potter game for themselves, their kid, and so on. Boycotts rarely work out in the gaming space since the internet =/= the amount of casual gamers in real life.

Overall, the game is great. The developers were clearly passionate in their work and even incorporated themes in the game that Rowling is outspokenly against but since she already is paid in advance, the game tanking in sales wouldn't have affected her. I'm pretty sure the developers were more upset with her overall since if she had kept quiet none of this would've happened since the boycotting came from genuine experiences just poorly vocalized and executed.

@Stevemalkpus Tears of the Kingdom will continue to sell at a steady pace for at least another 8-10 months tho, if not through the next holiday season.

Harry Potter more popular than Star Wars in movie game sales in '23. Wonder how SW: Outlaws will fare when it releases

I still don't understand how HZD has as many sales as this, if not more and it was a new IP. Yes I know it's been out much much longer

I tried to get into it once. Got a bit overwhelmed with the Hogwarts map. That’s more of a “me” issue than the game’s issue. But I’ll try again eventually!

I played through it after everyone was making a stink about it, was mostly good but the grind to graduate at the end was brutal. Also having no point system bummed me out.

I remember a few weeks ago someone criticizing my take that Sony should boycott media outlets that published the content of the Insomniacs leak, saying it would be Sony shooting itself in the foot.

Here you go then, a good example that a combination of big brands and good games absolutely doesn't need all these outlets to sell. Quite the contrary. I think it's really time we change "gaming journalism" so it's neither PR marketing for the publishers nor ideologically based content copy-pasted from reddit.

Kudos to PushSquare though, it managed to hold its head above the water most of the time during controversies.

I had 2 reasons to buy the PS5 to enjoy the feeling as if it was the real deal: GT7 and Hogwarts Legacy.

I loved the game, personally I would rank it 3rd best game of the year after BG3 and FFXVI. I don't think I want a sequel though, as it would most likely be more of the same. I think of HFW, God of War Ragnarok or Spider-Man 2 compared to their first installment. I would instead prefer one or two DLCs, could be a small and a big one, something like FFXVI is doing, or even a single one, something in the length of Phantom Liberty.

@RBMango I haven't played it yet but it's on my backlog. What didn't you like about it? I've heard excellent things about it from friends but their gripes are over things I think are pretty general in most games. Anything specific, beyond the common failures that have been mentioned in the comments, that made you dislike it?