Black Myth: Wukong Becomes Steam's Biggest Ever Single Player Launch

So glad to read from many playing that the doom and gloom was blown way out of proportion and the PS5 performance issues are more comparable to FF7 Rebirth or Elden Ring than Cyberpunk. This is what happens when people think they know everything and always assume the worst. Can’t wait to start playing today

But how actually is the game on ps5?

Doesn’t matter if 5million are trying to play it if it’s utter garbage.

I just watched Spawnwave play an hour of this on the PS5, Was a bit boring tbh! Just looked like general meandering inbetween boss fights really. He played on performance mode for most of it, but did switch between the different modes available, the graphics do take quite a hit on performance but it plays very smoothly, with the occasional frame rate glitch. Recommend watching the video if you're interested in the game.

DF are notorious for their nitpicky technical reviews and analysis. That's not a criticism, it's what they do. Even with some occasional 'traversal stutter' probably due to UE5, it's not going to put me off enjoying its phenomenal gameplay in such amazingly beautiful environments. And that's also what DF said.

Deserved i put in four hours so far and it’s amazing. The reviews that said it was a boss rush like are so off base it makes me question if they played it or even know the meaning of that term because just in chapter 1 alone there’s plenty of optional and pretty well hidden areas to explore and bosses to fight

@PaperAlien really I don’t think so and that’s what I’m playing on. It’s weird because balanced at least on my tv took the biggest hit and looked like smeary sh*t,quality looked amazing but the frame rate was ropey as hell and performance with vrr runs extremely well and only takes a slight hit to graphics compared to quality which I usually stick with in games but since the difference was negligible to my eyes. I don’t feel like I’m missing out and the responsiveness is more important anyway

@jrt87 that’s usually a pc problem and in my four hours I don’t think I’ve had that at all

@PaperAlien You description fits to this (btw great) review by Eurogamer:

https://www.eurogamer.net/black-myth-wukong-review

@PsBoxSwitchOwner luckily it’s not utter garbage matter of fact it’s the furthest thing from that

@dark_knightmare2 that’s fine but with a site telling me what’s happening on steam means nothing for ps5 version.

@dark_knightmare2 Glad you like it. I'm willing to buy it today. I noticed everyone just talking about bosses, it seems to me this game has nothing else to offer only bosses. Are there other enemies , and exploration in between? Or is it just bosses every 10 minutes or so? Can you go back to previously visited locations? Sorry for the silly questions but its just not clear from the reviews.

Might as well post my thoughts here. Performance is way better then expected, yes its not perfect but compared to say Elden Ring or Jedi Survivor (at launch) its far better. Visually its nice and its not even too blurry on performance mode, its a noticeable downgrade compared to the PC version but its still a pretty game. Had no bugs or glitches in the 4 hours i've played as well.

As for the gameplay its more a Soulslite then Soulslike in that it takes ideas like "bonfire" checkpoints but doesn't restrict itself to the usual rules. Its boss heavy but there is exploration and its not super hard though its not easy either. Combat is the star, very flashy and cool and a lot to it.

@DennisReynolds is it playable on quality mode? Is the graphic looks significantly better on that mode?

@Tatarimokke I played a bit on quality like an hour or so and the framerate seems to hold but the graphical downgrade to performance mode for me didn't seem that big. Balanced mode is the worst mode, both resolution and performance are all over the place on it for some reason.

Welcome to modern gaming where the biggest single player game in the history of Steam is a solid 81 on Opencritic.

@ChrisDeku Is 81% bad or something? 🙄

It's almost like real gamers like immersion and escapism and dislike propaganda. Crazy!

Wow those are seriously impressive numbers. I was hoping it would do well but this is like Elden Ring/Hogwarts Legacy kinds of success. Madness

@ChrisDeku As a result of modern game journalism

This runs great and is a blast. If you buy your psn credit cheap (you can easily save %16 in a few minutes) then this is £46.20.
I'm feeling the value here and Im glad this launched for my birthday (tomorrow, and Im 60 - how the hell did that happen?)

I cant speak for late game, but it seems glitch free so far and runs dead smooth in performance mode with vrr.

@Logonogo people need to stop listening to FPS DF whom only offers criticism and no real value. People should go back to enjoying games that suit their tastes. Now of course how cyberpunk launched was unacceptable but most games launch playable.

@Burnish1619 Is that why Helldivers 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 are so popular?

Imagine that, gamers want to play a game that is free of DEI and projection.

@DennisReynolds 81 is solidly above average, which is not what you'd expect from the most successful single player game in the history of Steam.

I will definitely later gots to go to work 1st 😥

I'm so glad that eastern developed games, are delivering the goods, now when western games, are just getting worse and worse.

Performance mode, is pretty low in resolution, and drops into the 40:s, during intense moments. But mostly seems to stick around 50-60, with some stutters. Still a lot smoother, compared to the quality mode, which looks amazing, but feels like it runs in 20fps, in comparison.

I bet the PS5 Pro will do wonders to this game.

@ChrisDeku Nah its a great score as 8/10 is considered great.

Installed cant wait to play it later! Just ruminating over whether to use, Balanced or Performance? Has anyone tried the modes and has some feedback? (Where are you DF!?)

This is gonna push the PS5 a lot in China, i've read chinese people that bought the console just for this game

@CrashBandicoat dude the game is selling gangbusters you aren’t hammering anything. also comparing a 50 hour game to a malfunctioning dvd is hilarious

@Solingo_Bill I was gonna mention China as well lol. Considering how also China is much more versed in PC gaming since they only just got consoles more readily over there, I bet the Steam numbers are higher than Elden Ring because this is a game by a Chinese company, with a focus on the Chinese market, so I wouldn't be shocked if those numbers are higher because of that alone

@DennisReynolds that's not how aggregate scores work, especially in video games where journalists use inflated scores and the average Is like 72. 50% of all games very made are 72 or higher.

Black myth is currently the 77th highest rated game of the year

I would have picked it up, but it's too close to Star Wars Outlaws release. I'll get it down the line at a slight discount.

@CrashBandicoat it is far harder to optimize a massive game with tons of demands compared to streaming a digital video file so yes the comparison is hilarious. The issues in this game sound very minor so to demand absolute perfection out of a project so ambitious is ridiculous and I doubt you find satisfaction in almost any game if that’s how you approach it. Anyway have a good one

@ChrisDeku 81% is a great score a 8/10 is a great score.

Since my budget is a little thin for games this month, I decided to go for Bleak Faith instead, which is a very cool game this far (gameplay a little rough, but oh my god the atmosphere, music and world is awesome). What would you compare Wukong too? Stellar Blade with Ape? Or more like Enslaved?

@Shakybeeves Balanced is awful both visually and performance wise. The popular choice seems to performance mode with motion blur set to weak and that's how i'm playing it, it still looks nice and the framerate is more consistent.

@Shakybeeves
Go with performance. The other two modes stutters like crazy.

It's almost as if most gamers just care if a game is good and don't care for the virtue signalling.

The panic over on resetera over the numbers this game is doing was amusing though.

People still enjoy single player games. Take notes.

@DennisReynolds OK, there there's been 82 'great games' already this year but only one of them is the most successful single player game of all time on steam. The one by a new studio with no history and it achieved it's peak on launch day, not over time though positive word of mouth. 3-4m+ people just showd up on day one to buy a game with no history based solely on what videos and reviews were available before launch. Seems pretty normal I guess, happens every week.

@ChrisDeku I mean China is huge so i expect that's played a big part.

N.i.c.e. like i said before black myth wukong is going to be a instant hit.the very first trailer was amazing.so now this game is going to be a blast to play.word up son

@CrashBandicoat the only people paying £70+ for games are those who can't be arsed to find them cheaper online or those poor suckers that bought into the digital ps5 and are getting shafted left right and center..

It just passed Counterstrike and now has the 3rd highest all time peak players on Steam with 1.9 million peak concurrent.

@MrMagic yes, because all the games that don't care for the virtue signaling have done exceptionally. And all the ones that do have failed.

Can somebody please tell Sony to STOP banning games for sale in 170 countries on steam. This ban includes CHINA which is by far the biggest market of steam today.

They will not have another Helldivers 2 situation if they keep this up.

Another epic win for single-player gamers.👌

Have to wait on buying Black Myth though as my wallet will be going to many other games down this later half of the year.

@ChrisDeku: As pointed out by a few members in here, China’s market is huge and the game was developed primarily for the Chinese audince in mind, not to mention its an adaptation of one of the most famous Chinese epic stories ever. Those definitely counts to all the key factors on why these numbers are as big as they are.

I played for about 15 - 20 minutes last night on PC (got to the first "bonfire"). What a bombastic prologue sequence - true an epic introduction!

I am looking forward to digging into it deeper when I have more time to play.

@naruball It's pretty incredible how many in this comment section alone are pushing that narrative. And when I say incredible, I mean depressingly predictable.

@MrMagic The person you're replying to didn't even say anything negative about the game. You're behaving like a child.

@somnambulance
Thanks for the explanation. Might give this a try next month then.

@DennisReynolds sounds great, I'm sold started to download it thanks!

@get2sammyb it beat palworlds count on steam its numbah 2 baby 👶 😆😆😆😆

@Ainu20 just when you think we're progressing, it's like nooope!

Apparently 88.1% of its sales are from China, and 89.7 if you include Hong Kong. That’s pretty wild when you consider that Chinese gamers do not historically buy a lot of single player premium games.

Not surprised.

Stayed until it launched on Steam last night (just to see how it looks I told myself) Big mistake!! was up until 1AM playing. It is stunning in motion and fun to play. Also the characters are already fantastic (The Secret of NIMH hands on the mountain elder

Boss fights are amazing!

It already at "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam with 72,000 reviews.

This is looking like another Stellar Blade level obsession for me! Enjoy, Good times for single player games.

Heck yeah. I wont buy day 1 because of budget. Maybe early next month. Can’t wait to play.

Western media trying so hard to cancel this game

EASILY GOTY contender. One of the best games in recent years.

I will wait astro bot before deciding which is which tho.

It's going to be (another) solid Push Square 7 I reckon.

Personally I think it's brilliant!

The boss rush thing is kinda confusing to me. You could boil any of the Dark Souls games down to that, with some element of off the beaten path exploration. Especially the first one. Dunno, replayed Dark Souls 3 a whole bunch after Elden Ring and the difficulty comes in the boss fights, pushing to get there.

Nioh 2 though, different story. That game’ll whoop ya in the exploration phase.

@Orochilocka Its more within 2 hours you have faced around 5-6 bosses.

@ChrisDeku I commented in another thread, and a few people commented here, I'm not sure if those steam numbers include regional data but keep in mind Simplified Chinese and English frequently swap the #1 position for language on Steam and this is a Chinese made game set in a classical Chinese fable, on a platform often biggest in China, where the Chinese buy hyper-nationalist. The "biggest single player game launch ever on steam thing" may easily come down to "Chinese thing launched on huge platform in China" combined with the marketing hype driving it higher than average elsewhere.

Everything I've seen (but not played) so far makes this look like an average souls-y boss battler plus big Nvidia promotion as a tech demo, plus the China thing. May be a great game, but it seems oversold for non-gameplay reasons. For me it'll be a see where the mood is 5 months from now and wait for a sale (on PC.)

What an awesome introduction the start was. Absolutely loved it! Game turned out great so far.

It’s such a fantastical looking adventure I can’t wait to play

@NEStalgia Eurogamer had a tweet in their article that

88% playing on steam were from China, 3% from US. (But I couldn’t tell you if it was middle of night US or anything).

Peak hit 2million, so even without China that’s still a solid 250k players for a debut game. Not bad at all imo.

Not that I think it matters where people play. We don’t start saying that 80% of CoD players are from US or anything. (Seems people want to try spin negative on it because it not western)

@ChrisDeku It's interesting that this game has seemingly managed to resonate with Chinese gamers where many other single player titles have failed to do so, despite it not necessarily looking like an exceptional game. Maybe it's the Journey to the West theme couple with a Chinese developer that did the trick.

Whatever the reason, hopefully it encourages more Chinese studios to consider developing single player titles.

@ChrisDeku I think you are actually making a great point about scores but people aren’t understanding it or aren’t willing to try understand.

If this game becomes the players game of the year, but is 77th according to critics (or worse by the end of the year) then I think that shows a massive disparity between the ‘industry’ and gamers themselves.

Edit: However, if it is just Chinese nationalism at play, then I guess the score is likely more accurate.

Played for just over an hour it's challenging but not overly difficult so far.Got beat a few times by that big head boss in chapter 1 lol.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah, that's about what I expected.

It's not so much "spin because it's not western" but anomalous data like "#1 game ever on Steam" from an unheard of dev, is being framed as something about the game making it curbstomp everything else in direct competition when the real differentiator is its country of origin primarily in its own market. I.E. It doesn't really reflect any paradigm shift in the overall gaming landscape so much as highlight how much China buys China is even more extreme than believed. For China this is probably the biggest single game release in 30 years just because of its identity. For everyone else it's just another soulslite.

Plus, not even CoD is so single-country tilted even if the US is the largest market.

Not that it looks like a bad game, but it looks like a typical 7/10 #5 on launch week kind of game, outside the extreme (Nvidia) marketing, and the China factor. Also keep in mind the game came free with every Nvidia GPU sold in the past month, so that certainly boosted sales and initial play metrics, it's a free pack in with every GPU since early July.

@Ainu20 Chinese company + Chinese setting/story is everything. It's why many many many Hollywood films of late have been taking Chinese fables and dressing them in a Western skin, to sell in that all important China market.

Thank you Asian companies for being the only ones who still prioritizes good stories and fun gameplay in a game, unlike Western companies who prioritizes the skin color of their characters and their games flops afterwards.

@MrMagic Curious where you're seeing this (RE: panic on ResetEra). I popped over to the official thread for the game on ResetEra and it just seems like... people talking about the game and mostly enjoying it, lol.

I remember when we first saw footage and people thought it was fake.

I can't believe it's finally here. I'm downloading it right now lol

We can only hope western investors see that when you make a good game without any hidden agenda's, we will support it. Don't listen to the tiny minority obsessed with certain political issues. We play games to escape real life crap and more and more companies are shoving this into our games.

This is a matter of geography rather than anything to do with the popularity or quality of the game.

@get2sammyb that's harsh to say its nonsense, as if there's no credibility to it at all. You even allude to the same in the article....'Analysis suggests many of the players are based in China..'

A triple AAA Chinese game about Chinese lore, mostly being played by the Chinese....

Also, I'm not the o ly one to point this out so why am I being labelled as speaking nonsense? 🤷‍♂️

No need to apologise 😄👍

Why the hell was my post deleted, as trolling/baiting?
It's an opinion. Stop censoring posts, you don't agree with.
It's called free speech.
I'll bet this will be deleted as well...

People are bending back over for China. All because of a monkey! ANGRY LETTERS!

@somnambulance I spent a lot of my time playing Stellar Blade calling it “Bayonetta 4”, which basically started out as what I suppose this crowd would call “DEI Dante” 🤪 and really enjoyed it, but have to skip this one b/c I’m not up for the challenge. Which is a shame b/c we’re a big “Journey to the West” household. Any movie or tv show based on it, that we know about, we watch. But I just can’t.

@Titntin Congrats on the big 6-0 and the continued gaming, I turned 59 last month and am feeling old. I like the look of this one, reminds me of Stellar Blade which I just finished Sunday night, on Easy Story mode, with way too many “Game Over” screens, so I’m sitting this one out. 😩

Gotta hand it to China, they know how to make good games. Probably because they focus on actually making them fun rather than using them as a platform to send a message.

Reading that headline made me realize how out of touch I've become with gaming over the past few years

Wukong became the most successful singleplayer launch on Steam ever and I've still no clue what this game is about nor have I even seen a second of gameplay. Same happened with that scam game "The Day Before" which was one of the most wishlisted games ever and yet the first time I've heard about it was after it released and eyeryone made fun of it how bad it is

@ATaco not quite true. China has censorship imposed on game developers over what they can do. Not just Chinese developers either, as witnessed by how the cowardly Activision deleted scenes of Tianamen Square in CoD because of complaints by the CCP.

@ATaco you're absolutely right. China has a long tradition of very successful and critically acclaimed games, like... Can't think of one off the top of my head, but thank God they didn't try to send a message. We all know how badly that turned out for games like The Last of Us and God of War.

Very happy for the the developers of this game, as it looks amazing to me.

@mariomaster96 I think in your case your lack of knowledge is age related. Anyone who lived through the 80s would know the story of Monkey, and therefore Journey to the West, before this game came out.

@naruball The Last of Us 2. Don't mix that up with the wonderful TLoU. What they did to Joel and Ellie in 2 broke my heart.

@riceNpea I know the sequel has been decisive (sorry to hear it broke your heart ), but still got a ton of game of the year awards and sold really well, so definitely a success for Sony.

@riceNpea But even then, there still obviously was a ton of hype behind this game which went completely past me

Guess I just don't spent that much time in forums etc anymore than I used too (which probably is a good thing)

And the journalists berating the game can take the L once again. Wukong is a tremendous game that I can’t wait to play this week

@naruball it did. It was a commercial success, but I think the popularity of the first one guaranteed that. I know there was never a moment I wasn't going to buy it as I was very invested in the story.

And then I played it and realised that ND didn't write the second game for us, they wrote it for themselves, a bit like what is happening now with Disney and Star Wars.

@naruball Let's just ignore the biggest moneymakers in the industry like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail and soon to be ZZZ.

@mariomaster96 that's my point. You'd have a working knowledge of what the game is based on if you'd grown up watching Monkey like my generation did, no need for noticing gaming hype about it.

The TV show 'Monkey' is a cultural landmark for anyone old enough to appreciate it when it was first aired.

@ashipaw Is that why Baldur's Gate 3 didn't flop with its diverse cast of pan characters? Dude your racism is showing.

@Savage_Joe The journos that put it into the 80's with great reviews? Stop with this weirdo sweaty culture war BS.

@riceNpea Screenrants review played people like you like fools. Its Screenrant they live off ragebait and they knew the right words to trigger a certain subset of people. One review just one review got more press then all of the others just because right wing chuds have meltdowns over certain words. Screenrant made you look like fools and are laughing at the press and clicks they gained from you lot.

@DennisReynolds read Screenrant review and what they said is negative about game. Why are you defending bad journalists? That is your BS.

Playing this right now, about 3 hours in.
Performance is the best mode, forget about balance and quality modes.
Remove motion blur and reduce camera shake.
Good game, but still doesn't hit as a GOTY to me.

@ATaco typical strawman. Never said that games that don't send a message sell badly. Only that several games with a message also sell well.

@DennisReynolds and you pull out of context one co.parision. why you don't focus on failed projects more?
Always you can find something which will stand out of crowd.

@DennisReynolds yeah? " As a Woman player I am allowed to see lack of diversity and missing woman characters in first couple hours" as a bad thing. Thats how games should be reviewed? It is not clickbait, it is that persons thinking.

@Logonogo “absolute perfection” - no one on pc is asking for absolute perfection, having a game that literally pauses when traversing the world or mid-combat is so far from perfection it’s not even close. Having some frame drops is fine, as you say nobody is expecting absolute perfection from a small studio. In fact, if you play pc, you’re very much used to games not having perfect optimisation.

Unreal engine seems to have massive issues with frame stutter on pc. I noticed it a lot when playing lords of the fallen, it’s present in hellblade 2 and in this game, it’s even present in Fortnite epic’s own title.

I find these stutters borderline unplayable - to go from 80+fps to 0fps is incredibly jarring and borderline unplayable for me. Especially when they persist throughout the game. With this issue plaguing pretty much every recent unreal title on pc I’m at the point now where I’d rather devs use any engine other than unreal on pc.

@DennisReynolds your ire would be better served aimed at Screenrant for politicising their reviews to antagonise people. I agree with you that people were triggered by it, but then I found that understandable if a review is more interested in generating ideologically motivated complaints (because the author has ties to a company who's job is to be professionally offended: Sweet Baby) about a game than actually reviewing the game itself.

Of course, you're free to opine how you wish, though because we are communicating via text it's difficult to judge tone, and frankly, I percieve your tone to be combatative rather than conversational.

You refer to me as part of 'you lot' which you reference as 'right wing chud', simply because I make a point about Screenrant that you actually agree happeneded and had negative consequences. Is there a reason you wish to try to offend me with that label just for having an unfavourable opinion of what they did?

@naruball
What messages were those games trying to send? I never once felt like I was being preached to while playing them.

Interested in this one a little more since reading the comments here. Finding out its not exactly proper souls and almost GoW and DMC kinda difficult rather than the mostly annoying Souls formula while still not being easy has got me interested a bit more. Will have to watch some reviews now and keep more of an eye on it

@Beerheadgamer82 yeah, if it HAS to be compared to Souls, it's more like Bloodborne than anything else. So, that's a big tick 😊

@riceNpea tldr calm down

@DestructionAllstars is a terrible game.

@riceNpea each to their own. Bloodborne looks great with the gothic vibes and all, just find it's combat slow and sluggish like all Souls games are, not my cup of tea tbf. I respect diehards of these Souls games tho and adore watching the speedruns some do

@Beerheadgamer82 I can agree with you, which is why I'm pointing out its more akin to Bloodborne when people label it 'Souls-like'. If you havent played it, Bloodborne is easily the most accessible From game in the genre.

@riceNpea Bloodborne was my first experience of a Souls game in 2015 or 16. Do remember my first impressions were really good and then a little later like many do on their first time with any Souls game just end up frustrated😆. Granted something only like half a dozen hours with it and that was almost 10 years ago now. If tried again now there's a possibility could get to grips with it a bit more with some patience but my gaming time and huge never ending backlog sometimes has other ideas

@jrt87 can I interest you in some beans? They're magic...

@Beerheadgamer82 I get it 😊

I'm not buying this game because within 3 months it will be heavily discounted, and like you say, there's a backlog to get through 😊👍

@riceNpea Dying to play Astro Bot Next month ha. If Wu Kong peaks my interest over the coming months or next year, can get it on a sale deal

@Beerheadgamer82 yes, Astrobot is a nailed-on purchase. I've no worries about how it will perform or how much I'll enjoy it.

@riceNpea Same here

@ATaco that's wonderful to hear. The best way to send a message is when you don't feel like they're sending a message.

@REALAIS Dude its clickbait Screenbait are famous for it. The fact one review causes a meltdown just shows what snowflakes a certain subset of gamers are. Normal people shrug move on and forget.

It'll be interesting to see how well the game has done outside of China as that's where a vast majority of the players will be from.

@riceNpea I referred to you as that lot because i've all of your comments.

"[...] as the developer was forced to delay the Xbox Series X|S version due to technical issues".

We know what that means. Xbox Series S is too memory bandwidth constrained for this game. And to think that that piece of junk is still regarded as a "great move by Microsoft", "very consumer friendly" and so on. Well, the truth is that Series S may not be the main reason, but it's definitely an important component of Xbox's implosion as a brand.

The results that can be achieved when you don't go chasing that mythical "modern audience"

@Neither_scene OP's post was in relation to the PS5 version as was this whole discussion. I know nothing about the PC version but nothing like what you described is happening on PS. and it sounded like he did want absolute perfection

@DennisReynolds that's fine. I've no problem with you being rude, it's your perogative.

@Tatarimokke yes there’s other enemies to fight and plenty of pretty well hidden areas to find and explore and you can fast travel back to previous shrines in previous areas

I love how people with zero media literacy spread this narrative that this game is selling "because it's not woke", it's literally a non sequitur lol
And I love it because they're the ones lamenting politics being put everywhere, when it's them seeing politics everywhere, where "politics" to them equals anything they don't agree with.
Everything is political, but I guess you have to be open minded and not numbed by capitalist realism to understand that.

@Logonogo well if you’re playing on a console you’re never going to get absolute perfection from a third party multi-platform title of this scope, especially on dated hardware.

The only games I use my ps5 for are first party titles - they usually have amazing optimisation, look great and have a locked performance mode.

The current consoles balance price with performance and as a result there will be compromises. The only reason a PC can offer better performance is because the hardware can be exponentially more powerful and therefore usually capable of brute forcing less optimised titles.

@mariomaster96 RE being unaware of the game, while it has been talked about on console gaming sites and was part of the June events, I think that mostly comes down to the game being primarily associated and promoted on PC, with a major spike in attention when Nvidia started directly promoting it and bundling it with new GPUs last month. When everyone was going ape (pun intended) over Stellar Blade, the PC world was looking at this.

wow, this game's bring out the chud-energy. whew!

@DennisReynolds I'm starting to like you more each post 👍

So glad this game is doing well. Just like hogwarts legacy did its not being affected by negative comments.

@NEStalgia So it can't be counted as the largest single player release ever because it's from China? We need an american or english spoken title to be the greatest ever?

Game is good to play, looks amazing an 2.2 million players worldwide. Doesn't matter if most are in China it is still the biggest ever.

@somnambulance "Nier"

I played the original "Nier" way back when it first released on PS3, never played Automata b/c I didn't like all the brown and 2Dness of the demo, so it's not a comparison I would make, though I suppose if I had maybe. My kid was going to buy Wukong yesterday on PC when they found an old $100 Visa card but I told them they're year old laptop may not be able to run it well enough, but then it turned out they had already used the gift card, so end of discussion. They'll be happy to know it's harder than Stellar Blade though, they're always up for a challenge. They're planning on playing Stellar Blade NG+ when they're back home for winter break, they go back to campus on Friday.

I'm gonna hold fire until goes down a bit, or at the very least until I see some good PS5 reviews to convince me. It looks nice but I'm not sold on the game... Yet

@Whately86 It's about the fact that we're comparing apples to orangutans (pun intended.)

As a data point "largest single player release" is "largest single player release", but it leads to comparing it against the rest of the market when in practice it's competing in a totally different market. When this is a fairly average selling release in the same markets as other games it's being compared to and is selling primarily in a single national market based on national factors in a way that you can't benchmark other titles to.

If you wanted to have a single back of box soundbyte takeaway from this sales figure it would be "Games companies seeking profits should focus on making Chinese traditional themed games by Chinese subsidiaries to sell only in China - the rest of the world doesn't actually matter."

Everywhere that isn't China, this is an average release of a decent game. The historic numbers coming from one single country have more to do with the game's identity being linked to a very nationalist market's identity as a domestic product than the game itself.

Not a knock on the game, and not a jingoist statement, but there's no real lesson in games sales data here other than "China goes really extreme into the identity thing." And that's led to a really out of place sales metric.