Skyrim - 3.4M Retail Sales in 48 hours?

Before you comment that VGChartz is notoriously unreliable - I hear you - but all indications seem to be that Skyrim has had a massive release. CountChocula points us to this article at VGChartz that claims 3.4M retail sales (not including digital) in the first two days:

2011 is fast becoming the year games debuted at incredible numbers, as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sells over 3.4 million copies at retail (not including digital sales) in its first 2 days on sale.

Up over 600% on Oblivion's modest 490k staggered opening across PS3 and X360, Skyrim will manage to outsell Oblivion as a whole in a matter of weeks. 59% of units were sold on the X360 (over 2 million copies) and 27% on the PS3, with 14% on PC.

On the digital side, many people have noted Skyrim is trouncing CoD: Modern Warfare 3 on the Steam stats, although there are several possible explanations for this - including, of course, massive Skyrim sales.
While we're on Skyrim, Alrik sends in an interview with Pete Hines over at Joystiq from a couple of days back.
More information.

Sweetrolls!

The way they are talking is as if Skyrim will outsell CoD: MW3…

Which makes me laugh at how Bioware are trying to chase the CoD crowd with multiplayer, more action less talking etc.

Perhaps they should try making a good RPG for a change, seems to be doing well for Bethesda!

Bethesda has earned it. This is what Lord British should look to instead of mmobs.

numbers dont convince me anymore after oblivion. I wait for a review from rpgwatch.com before buying anything from beth again.

While those numbers are remarkable, it makes me wonder just how much more remarkable they would have been during a different time. Skyrim is facing massive competition at the moment with a bunch of high profile releases like Battlefield 3, CoD: MW 3, Anno 2070, Saints Row 3rd, Uncharted 3, LotR: War in the North, Batman: Arkham City, M&M Heroes VI, and EA's/Sega's annual updates to their sports game franchises. It's also somewhat surprising to see it doing so well on the PC. It broke Steam's record for most concurrent users during a time when you'd think that CoD: MW 3 would be running circles around every other game out there. I'm really glad to see Skyrim perform that well in such a rather adverse environment .

Good news. Considering some of the trends in RPG style games I, for one, am delighted to see it doing well. While I would prefer a more PC focused game, and more stats heavy, I am really enjoying this game immensely. Doing well in sales sends the message that other people also enjoy this style of game which in turn (one would hope) means more of them getting made. Having lost Bioware to the darkside I have been turning to companies like Bethseda and Obsidian for the style of games I prefer. I am also looking forward to KoA: Reckoning and hope it lives up to expectations and does well.

VGZChartz numbers for DX:HR sales in Europe were off by 100%. Just saying.

Their PC numbers are even more of a joke - i.e. reporting 300K sales for something that later turned out to have sold over a million (Portal 2).

Originally Posted by TheSisko
VGZChartz numbers for DX:HR sales in Europe were off by 100%. Just saying.

Aren't they concentrating on the U.S. saless anyway ?

Originally Posted by ikbenrichard
numbers dont convince me anymore after oblivion. I wait for a review from rpgwatch.com before buying anything from beth again.

Just because you didn't like their past products doesn't mean they were bad. Oblivion had high reviews by most people.

Originally Posted by tornnight
Just because you didn't like their past products doesn't mean they were bad. Oblivion had high reviews by most people.

Reviews by main stream press mean nothing.

Oblivion was crap however Skyrim is better than Oblivion and I would say it so far on its way to beat Morrowind as the best TES game.

They had ads all over Chicago for Skyrim. Even on taxis.

So far, Skyrim is very, very good. Blows away Oblivion, and I liked Oblivion. I haven't gotten very far though. Taking my time.

14% of boxed sales were for PC. With digital sales I bet it's at least 20-25% of total sales. That's pretty good, and much higher than snooty Todd Howard said a while back ("95% of our audience is on consoles").

Good on you, PC community.

Originally Posted by TheSisko
VGZChartz numbers for DX:HR sales in Europe were off by 100%. Just saying.

Their PC numbers are even more of a joke - i.e. reporting 300K sales for something that later turned out to have sold over a million (Portal 2).

VGchartz PC numbers always exclude digital sales, as Valve does not disclose this information to NPD or Nielsen.

In the case of Portal 2, the majority of PC sales were digital, which seems to be the trend for most games these days.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
In the case of Portal 2, the majority of PC sales were digital, which seems to be the trend for most games these days.

The Witcher 2, however, had like 75% of its sales through boxed copies. I think it really depends, and I think North America is much more about digital downloads than Europe.

VGCharts are in no way any form of actual sales numbers. They mean nothing at all.

I did Sales Analysis for a living. I would have been fired had I used VGCharts "fake magical numbers" just FYI.

Originally Posted by Jaesun
VGCharts are in no way any form of actual sales numbers. They mean nothing at all.

I did Sales Analysis for a living. I would have been fired had I used VGCharts "fake magical numbers" just FYI.

Should VGCharts sales relative to other games be a valid comparison though? The actual numbers are no good, but I wonder if comparisons are reasonable.

Pretty easy to see why Consoles are the target audience now. Wow these numbers are crazy.

I have always been a "buy the real box" guy and don't really like Digital downloads I might be switching soon due to the fact that the physical box is so skimpy now. A tiny DVD style box with a 20 page bare minimal manual. Map is nice but other than that not really worth buying the real box.

No lore section or anything in the manual. I remember Daggerfall had like a 100 page manual with lots of background history.

Originally Posted by Saxon1974
Pretty easy to see why Consoles are the target audience now. Wow these numbers are crazy.

I have always been a "buy the real box" guy and don't really like Digital downloads I might be switching soon due to the fact that the physical box is so skimpy now. A tiny DVD style box with a 20 page bare minimal manual. Map is nice but other than that not really worth buying the real box.

No lore section or anything in the manual. I remember Daggerfall had like a 100 page manual with lots of background history.

I live in Montreal, and I often have a hard time finding boxed PC games the day or the following days of release. Everywhere I went to to buy Skyrim (futureshop, best buy, ebgames,…) they were sold out of the PC version of Skyrim, but had tons of XBOX360 and PS3 versions left. That was the day of release. So I bought it through steam. It's as if they don't want me to buy a physical copy. It's not the first time either something similar happened, and more and more I am buying the digital versions.

I'm 20 hours into the game - first impression:
It is a "must buy" for every crpg-fan. It is better than Oblivion.
In short: Morrowind with better dungeons, better combat balancing and trade balancing.

Play on Expert for a greater challenge.