Black Myth: Wukong doesn’t just replicate the massive success of previous biggest games, it breaks them, with developer Game Science selling 10 million copies in just three days.
These massive sales figures mean that Black Myth: Wukong is actually one of the biggest video game releases in history. According to Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, 10 million copies would be enough to surpass Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy during the same time period. Elden Ring sold a whopping 24 million copies as of the beginning of this year, while Hogwarts Legacy sold 22 million copies at last count.
It’s hard to say how many of those sales came from China. We do know that it was the most-watched game on Chinese live streaming sites on its release day. Videogame Insights estimates that 80% of the game’s sales came from China, so that would mean about 8 million copies sold, with the remaining 2 million sold worldwide.
Black Myth: Wukong also ranks 2nd in the most played games on Steam, as judged by peak concurrent players. Yesterday it hit a whopping 2,415,714 players, which is its highest number to date. The peak usually occurs around 2pm UTC, which is unusual since most games typically get their most players in the evening. However, 2pm UTC is around 10pm in Beijing, China.
The game was so successful in China that it reportedly doubled PlayStation 5 sales, which is impressive since consoles typically don’t sell well in the country.
In fact, we can actually make some pretty interesting guesses about the PS5. According to a Twitter post from Game Science, Black Myth has reached a peak concurrent player count of 3 million across all platforms, and since we know what the PC numbers were, we can assume that PC sales have significantly outpaced consoles. If we take the Steam numbers and subtract them from 3 million, we get around 600,000 PS5 players.
I’m playing the game right now and will try to write a review as soon as possible. To be honest, I don’t think it’s as good as the sales figures suggest, but I’m still having fun playing it and I’m aiming for the platinum trophy if possible.
Congratulations to Game Science.
