"Skyrim earned hundreds of ‘Game of the Year’ awards and has sold over 20 million copies."

I've been looking for a long time and finally got my answer. WOW! That has to include digital sales, but Elder Scrolls has come a long way. No other game, besides Call of Duty, has come even close to that number this generation.

Twenty million. Wow.

Source is this ESO article just posted on the Bethblog http://www.bethblog.com/2013/06/10/e3-2013-eso-arriving-on-playstation-4-xbox-one/

Maybe they will finally have money to hire better writers?

It's an impressive feat, for sure, and bodes well for the future.

Woah, I didn't think Skyrim was that popular. Congratulations Bethesda for such a great game.

That just makes me curious why this popular game's lifetime only lasted 521 days or 1.43 years.

Ha, Hell, I'd write for them if they'd hire me. Writing is my profession.

DONT FORGET, 20mil is legit sales(PC xbox ps3)

With the addition of pirated PC skyrim(which i estimate to be about 20%-30% of the PC steam skyrim users), i think we have around 25mil people who bought it. It could be more though, consider it is very famous in Japan and china(all popular mod blogs are jap and chinese, and we have 3dm etc etc), i say the numbers hit 30m.

It is really a lot.

Blame it on casuals and 11/11/11.

Hmph. With that kind of profit, they better give it their all when working on the next installment.

Or sink the money in marketing for ESO and Fallout

Wait. The Elder Scrolls is popular in Japan? That's somewhat of a revelation to me, it is worlds apart from jRPGs and none of my Japanese friends will even go near it. It is surprisingly popular in Russia though.

I sure hope this success will allow them to hire more people to make a better TES next time.

I'd just be happy if they can release something that doesn't earn them the name "Bugthesda Game Studios" like practically all of their other releases since... Daggerfall.

More like better programmers and QA teams.

I'd still say writers above programmers and QA teams. You can fix glitches without Bethesda. Changing the writing especially and especially dialogue..not so much.

With that kind of money they could hire all the people from The Witcher

People who stole it shouldn't count as buyers

Why not, we get blamed for everything else.

While this is fantastic, hopefully this doesn't make Bethesda focus more on making the game even more streamlines >.> While I do love Skyrim I would still have rather had it be a deeper role playing game and focus a little less on action, though the combat still remains a bit dull for me.

This makes me both happy and PO'd at the same time if such a thing is possible.

Happy because I love TES and It's great to see the IP doing well and getting new people interested.

PO'd because it will likley:

1.) Continue the trend of "dumbing down" TES and RPG's in general to increase accessability, and hence profitability.

2.) Affirms to Bethesda that they can release a bug infested glitch-fest of a game and still RAKE $$$.

3.) Probly makes Bethesda say: "Hmm...why spend money on QA and top tier tech talent when you can get more bang for less buck with aggressive mainstream marketing?"

Skyrim, the greatest game that ever svcked.

Piracy isn't stealing regardless what thieves guild says.

It's already starting.

I'll just say that if Skyrim's sales #'s mean Bethesda will continue on the path they started down with Skyrim, then I will be one very pleased customer. Definitely improvement on the series. More freedom, more complexity, more options, less tedium. Best installment yet.

This. I've played a bit of Morrowind and loved it. I started out with Skyrim though, and I like the freedom that Skyrim allows towards developing your character compared to Morrowind's. I do enjoy Morrowind's loot and leveling a lot more though. If the next TES game can combine those both together, then we've got a game that I'll be playing for years to come.

Let's hope TES VI will be the best goddamned RPG ever.

Between Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, those 3 make up my top 3 favorite games ever.

Morrowind was #1 for the longest time, until Skyrim came out.

Oblivion made a lot of improvements over Morrowind I felt, but also regressed in a lot of ways. Oblivion's regressions were in areas that I found to be more important than the improvements, so Morrowind stayed ahead.

But Skyrim came out, and improved where Oblivion regressed, and continued on the trend where Oblivion improved, and then added in a whole bunch of other things that I liked better than either game did.

Maybe I'm just lucky. Skyrim pretty much added in everything I ever wanted to see in an Elder Scrolls game, and added in the things I was sad to see go from Morrowind to Oblivion. Skyrim pretty much checked off every single box that I was looking for.

Morrowind is great and did a lot of stuff amazingly. But I prefer the foundation that Skyrim built upon.

Morrowind created the checklist. Skyrim filled it out.