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There have been a number of breakout successes this year: Palworld got the ball rolling and Helldivers 2 picked up the mantle. But none compare to the absolutely outrageous story emerging around Black Myth: Wukong: the title has now topped 18 million sales across PS5 and PC in just two weeks. As previously reported, it sold 10 million copies in just three days, and has added a further eight million units to its tally since then.
The bulk of those units have been purchased in China, which speaks to the size of the market there. Up until recently console games were banned in the country, but since that policy changed, Sony has been working hard to appeal to the domestic market, which historically has preferred mobile titles. It’s backed local developers with its China Hero Project programme, and has become one of the biggest champions of gacha games, like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.
While the majority of Black Myth: Wukong’s copies have been sold on Steam, there have also been reports of PS5 consoles selling out around China, as Sony timed a strategic price promotion around the release of the game. This has prompted chatter of a “secret exclusivity” deal, although the specific details of which remain murky. This hasn’t been helped by conflicting reports, with neither creator Game Science or PlayStation responding to our requests for comment.
An expansion is now in development for the game, which the developer hopes will maintain the popularity of the release for many years to come. According to Bloomberg, this will be on a similar scale to Elden Ring’s excellent Shadow of the Erdtree add-on, which significantly built on the foundations of the FromSoftware favourite. The idea is to provide new content to retain the release’s popularity, without committing the time it’d take to build a sequel.
Were you one of Black Myth: Wukong’s impressive 18 million sales? What’s your overall impression of the game now the dust has settled around its initial launch day hype? Let us know in the comments section below.
Are you playing Black Myth: Wukong? (1,890 votes)
- Yes, of course I'm playing it
- I plan on playing it later down the line
- Nah, I'm not sure about the game yet
- No, Black Myth: Wukong just isn't for me
[source bloomberg.com]
Comments 53
I wonder how many copies are from China alone since this was the country's biggest game ever I think it got a lot of support there.
So I can see right from the first comment we're going to keep trying to down play this success as 'it's China carrying the sales.' 18 mil is 18 mil no matter how the game got there. Heck of an achievement with a huge media campaign against it in the West.
I'm proudly one of the 18 Million people who bought the game and I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
BTW I'm not from China. I'm an Egyptian who's living in Germany
Smartest thing Sony have done in years is get behind these Chinese/South Korean games. Obviously a lot of money to made.
I’m an American and bought the game. I do think part of its success is that it’s literally been one of the only 8+/10 tier single player games to release this year and many types of gamers are sort of starved at this point, but the game is also so fun that I’m glad this is the one that broke through at the right place at the right time.
Is there a physical release? I was just browsing the weekly top tens and it hasn't broken into either of the last two weeks, even though it has sat consistently high up on the digital sales in the UK, and at times being number one overall digital.
Not that it matters a whole deal, as they will be doing backflips with 18m and rising. I was just surprised at the apparent disparity in this one. I think total UK sales should be pretty high, even if mostly digital
Concord sold 0.15% of this game. in history of 100% single player AAA video games this will be the most sold game ever with this pace and concord will be the lowest sold AAA multiplayer game ever and they released within 4 days of each other.
Going to be honest while i really like the game the quality does drop the longer it goes on, Chapter 3 especially was pretty bad. Don't get me wrong its a very good 8/10 game but its no where near GOTY that some are making it out to be.
@somnambulance
No, it's because it's a genuinely good game. It's also based on Journey to the West, which is heavily popular in Asia and already had hype following it before release.
I remember seeing this game years ago and thinking it looks amazing.
I'd also say it's a 9/10 game imo. The boss fights alone blow every boss from other action games and action RPGs out of the water.
@DennisReynolds Things are more focused again after Chapter 3 and I can't see anything else this year being GOTY apart from maybe Stalker 2. Also I thought Chapter 3 was fine.
@Gamer83 There was no media campaign against it in the west. IGN reported sexism in the studio that was never denied or disproven (a Youtuber with clear bias never discredited IGN) but despite that they gave it a 8/10. Really Screenrant was the only outlier review wise who took major issues but who cares its Screenrant.
@TruestoryYep I've already finished it and for me Chapter 1 and 2 were the highlights of the game.
So far my top 5 this year are FF7 Rebirth, SMTV Vengeance, Prince of Persia, Tekken 8 and Stellar Blade. Black Myth might make the top 10 but giving what's yet to come i doubt it.
18m? That is actually insane!
The more success stories for SP games the better imo.
Game science is rolling in cash right now well deserved 👏
Half way through chapter 4 now and the wife and I have been really enjoying it. Bravo to the Devs for their hard work paying off.
I look forward to the expansion!
@Gamer83 Who's running this campaign against the game? Review websites gave the game great reviews, yt channels are praising it and twitch streamers were enjoying a lot playing the game. It has detractors, but it's a small minority and you're blowing it out of proportion.
Also the person above you made a legitimate question. China is a huge country and it would be interesting to know how many copies were sold there. It's an undeniable success, but to deny that it was partly successful because it was probably China's biggest game ever is just ignoring part of the story.
@TruestoryYep
I'd have said Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, even if it's a remake, was the frontrunner for Game of the Year based on reception but the Astro Bot reviews have me re-thinking that. Black Myth: Wukong looks fun for what it is, but like Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin (two games I really enjoy), not GOTY material.
I have slowly lost interest in the game (and I am only in Chapter 2). It was cool at first, but the whole "boss rush" nature of it is starting to get old.
I still fire it up from time to time, but my hype has dissipated, and I find myself going back to older games instead.
Congrats on its success though! It's not a bad game at all (it's very good), it's just not gelling with my right now.
Dear God! So happy for them. More news like this please
Loved this game to bits. Managed to get the platinum trophy a couple nights ago too. Up there being a GOTY for me!
@Dodoo my thoughts exactly. Money talks. If companies see single player games as good investments, they'll green light more of them.
@TruestoryYep FF7 Rebirth clears for GOTY.
I'm having a blast with it. Really cool to see it do well.
@DennisReynolds Your top five games are similar to mine as well. Haven't tried Prince of Persia yet though. Would you recommend?
@GilgaMax309 Its a fantastic Metroidvania and it really captures the feel of PoP with a big focus on avoiding deadly traps and platforming. Obviously its different to the 3D entries but they did take a lot from them including time based powers. So yeah highly recommend. Its also very accessible as you have a ton of options to tailer and tweak the difficulty to your liking.
Absolutely crazy sales! Good for them.
@DennisReynolds Nice! As long as the overall vibe is still very much like the previous PoP games, then I'll defo grab it. The metroidvania genre is quite addictive too, so thanks for summing it all up perfectly mate. 🙏🏼
@GilgaMax309 Yeah its basically a PoP take on Metroidvania mixed with good combat. The story has a Sands of Time vibe as well.
N.i.c.e. black myth wukong is a instant hit.like i Predicted it would be.word up son
Imagine how many more they would have sold if they could get it running on Xbox 😬
Game of the year so far imo. I’m in chapter 5 and don’t want it to end. You can see that every person that work in the game loved what they were doing. Love the little tales between chapters. And I think there were a campaign against the game too, I don’t know why and I don’t care but there was.
@Cloud39472 Astro Bot would be a fine competitor, seems like an incredible game.
But damn FF7 Rebirth is such a titan of a game.
Removed - off-topic
@Kanji-Tatsumi I will admit the Hero Projects have turned out some pretty good hidden gems.
Im one of them and im not a chinese 🫢 Just bought the game yesterday and play a little while. Love it so far.
Stop with the "From S***ware" name dropping. Let it be its own game and dlc.
@Gamer83 Thanks, my thoughts exactly. I am curious about numbers in each market, but that does not take anything away from the clear record breaking / making hit Wukong is.
People (and industry executives) need to be very careful in taking away any lessons from the success of this game. The game is primarily a runaway success in a single country, not so much because amazing game creates unprecedented response but just due to socio-cultural relevance of the game. It's not something that can be duplicated by any other game outside China, and can't really be duplicated by any other game inside China either. It's not the game's features, appearance, or quality that is driving sales, it's the cultural relevance of the particular theme coupled with the budget and appearance. Nobody, in China or out, can recreate what happened with this game, and I fear EVERY company will now try to.
Awesome game and it's up there with elden ring,lies of p and lords of the fallen in my opinion. I'll definitely be getting the expansion and hopefully we will see more action games from game science in the future.
@NEStalgia insomniacs GOT was a superb game and was a western game. Of course most of the sales will be from China seeing as it's a very famous Chinese story. Hopefully western devs will take notice and be able to tap into what makes the game so good and replicate it into their own games. I agree mostly with what you've said but I'm being optimistic that we will see more top quality single player driven games like this in the future.
@Whately86
I'll be interested to see the regional numbers as well. But just as interesting will be platform breakdown. My guess is it sold better on PC but would've be surprised if the PS5 version, despite the technical shortcomings, also did very well.
Now, here is the most important lesson from this game: originality matters.
Many, if not most hardcore gamers have been doing this (gaming) for decades now. There are too many games coming out these days, and not enough time to play them. Games have become too big, complex and bloated, forcing publishers to risk less and studios to adopt widespread tools. This, in turn, has made games too similar to each other, both from a visual and gameplay perspectives.
BMW is surely not a cornerstone of innovation, but it's the first game of its kind to come from China, and it is unique enough.
Sure, a large part of those sales originated from China itself, but there's no denying that this game has managed to garner a lot of attention across the west.
@Northern_munkey I'm not sure they can duplicate that kind of thing in the West (or that even anyone could duplicate it in China, it's kind of a special event there really.) China has such singularly central cultural touchstones central to their identity (even if half of them are banned on the mainland) that this sort of thing could happen. Japan does, too. I can't think of any similar comparison to the west. Everything is very decentralized and scattered across so many different factions' histories, rather than the one big monolithic faction China or Japan tend to represent. UN-fortunately the only single monolithic events the whole of the west can really share in are bad ones. The Crusades, WWII, WWI mainly, the plauge. Probably explains CoD's success.
Certainly devs can focus on great single player games, but I think that's basically unrelated to the cultural appeal that's driving this game's success. But you KNOW CEOs will be chasing ways of "replicating" this success either by copying the game design, copying the appeal to the Chinese market, or just expecting similar results if they market as hard then closing their studio when they overpromised investors.
@Art_Vandelay Calling this game ”unique” is hilarious, you most likely havent played it.
Not a chinese, Brazilian here. Bought the game but still waiting for the patches to improve performance on PS5 to come. Will start playing after that.
@Amppari It's obviously derivative of the many variants of the third-person action/adventure genre, but it has a decidedly distinct aesthetic.
I didn't say "unique period". I said "unique enough".
@naruball totally agree.
Surely Sony must be paying attention to these SP game successes while feeling the pain of concord and probably fairgame$ (not to mention suicidal squad etc) to the point they hopefully change strategy back to what made them successful in the first place?
Not a Chinese, but living in China.
It's for sure a big thing here right and dominating social media as well.
However, all big Chinese Games do so. So this is more a phenomenon, since it is also popular in the west, compared to the previous games like Genshin or Honor of Kings. These games got and still get advertised here as hell.
When I read "BMW makes Ps5 fly of the shelves in China" I can only wonder if that's the case. It's more like the stock here is very small anyway since the demand is low. If suddenly 500.000 people want one to play BMW, then I would not call that "fly of the shelves"...
PC and mobile is still the biggest platform here and that's where the majority of the 18 MIO will come from, especially in China.
Played and platinumed BMW, the game is excellent , looks amazing and plays great on my PS5 slim.
@mazzel reporting on accurate figures and in general publishing the truthfully,boring stuff does not make for glamorous reading I'm afraid. It's far easier to report on the more salacious and shady aspects as that is what people are perceived as needing..you live in China as stated so you are in more of a position than any of us to tell it how it is but that won't matter..you'll still be wrong.
The boss fights were way too hard for me, i won't be buying the expansion nor will i be buying any games like this in the future especially from game science now i know what they are like. If there had been a demo to try i would not have purchased this game.
Edited: I just wanted to add that I have no beef with Game Science and Black Myth Wukong is a good looking fun game with great authentic sounds and music, but I personally am still struggling with the Boss fights, still on chapter 1 Whiteclad noble, hahahaha!
Removed - trolling/baiting
@Kanji-Tatsumi Best games I've played in the last year were Wukong , stellar Blade and Lies of P..
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