How many total copies do you predict Skyrim will sell over the product lifetime?

December 15:

Skyrim has now shipped 10 million packaged retail copies according to a press release issued by Bethesda.

Although the digital sales numbers have not been released, according to Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve, "Skyrim is the fastest selling title in Steam's history." Considering how well past Valve games such as Portal 2 and TF2 have performed on Steam, I would imagine the Steam sales must be tremendous.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/skyrim-reaches-10-million-shipped-becomes-fastest-selling-steam-title-ever/



http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1245665-skyrim-sales-predictions-10-million-copies-shipped-as-of-dec-15/

update as of Dec 3

Sales During Week 4: 636,265 copies (excludes digital downloads)

Xbox 360: 294,007
PS3: 184,955
PC retail (excludes digital downloads) 157,303


http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly/: 5,803,982 (excludes digital downloads)

Xbox 360: 3,039,149
PS3: 1,659,492
PC retail (excludes digital downloads): 1,105,341

Wow.

Black Ops has only sold about 14 million copies. Considering me and quite a few others will probably be buying Skyrim twice (again for GotY), this game is crazy successful.

More than enough to ensure a TES VI and Fallout 4, which is all that matters to me!

Edit: Due to being a Steam only PC game, this is the first gamesas title I will not have purchased more than once, so in that way they lose a few sales.

Heck, people still buy Oblivion, probably even more after they finish Skyrim. Give it a month or two and Skyrim will appear on a steam sale for 50% off and watch the sales figures ratchet up.

It really is amazing how well this game is doing. I expected good numbers but nothing like this. Makes you wonder if developers are going to try and imitate Skyrim now.

I certainly hope so! :whistling:

I also wonder whether this is the first role-playing game for a lot of the people who bought copies.

I think Fallout 3 brought a lot of people into the Bethesda RPG fold. That was my first Bethesda game, and this is my first TES game. I haven't been terribly interested in the whole High Fantasy genre for a long time, but I'm loving Skyrim.

I rather doubt it. First not that many RPG developers have real interest in/expertise with open world development, although Obsidian got its feet wet with FONV. Secondly, Skyrim relies on a invest lots of resources/make big profits model. Trying to make a Skyrim on the cheap (a la DA II) is unlikely to produce the desired results. Specific features may be imitated but I don't foresee a move by other studios to make Bethesda-type games.

Look at the amount of content in Skyrim compared to e.g. the last game I bought, Deus Ex HR. Probably ten times the amount, at least? The number of man-hours required must be huge. That means you just about need a guaranteed blockbuster to get funding. So trying to compete on that level must be a daunting prospect.

thats a very interesting theory. Had I not already been involved in TES prior to FO3 I wonder if that would have been true for me.

I'd say over 25m due the popularity of Oblivion and Fallout 3.