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Skyrim, pretty much everybody’s Game of The Year in 2011, has sold more copies than every other game last year – except for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
On PC, it outsold every other Steam title by a factor of 3:1. More surprising is just how damned well it’s done on consoles.
In a press release patting themselves on the back for the sheer number of Skyrim mods created (more than 2 million downloads from over 2500 mods so far!), the company also noted how well the game was performing on console.
According to Bethesda, Skyrim – on the 360 alone – outsold every exclusive game on the platform, including Gears of War 3, Forza 4 and…well yeah. Gears of War 3 and Forza 4. Surprisingly, it’s also outperformed every one of the PS3’s exclusives, topping Uncharted 3 and Killzone 3. Especially surprising considering how broken the PS3 version was for so long.
“Within the first month following its release in November, Bethesda Softworks reported it had shipped over 10 million units of Skyrim across all platforms, representing approximately $650 million in retail sales, and those results have since increased substantially,” the press release says. That makes it the second highest grossing title behind Modern Warfare 3, so it’s done better than FIFA 12, which is incredibly impressive for a single-player RPG.
These kinds of stats do raise the question of whether exclusives are really necessary, or even worthwhile – especially considering their astronomical budgets. The only problem is exclusives are what help define and differentiate consoles – and without them we’d be headed for a one-console future – without competition or a need for innovation.
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