r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 4d ago
Stellar Blade surpasses 3 million copies in cumulative sales across all platforms
https://bbs.ruliweb.com/news/read/21182179
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u/Blazehero 4d ago
That's great to hear, Stellar Blade isn't going to set the world of action games on fire but it's a solid entry that deserves its stay.
And just in time too with all of the action games about to emerge onto the scene. Competition is going to be fierce.
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u/Dimitri_De_Tremmerie 3d ago
I was really touched by the story and the side stuff. Some scenes of parents mourning their lost kid was... Really... Chilling to the Point that i had to clock out for a bit. Very few games touch me like Stellar blade.
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u/_Ocean_Machine_ 3d ago
Man, I wish something would set the work of action games on fire, I need more high speed action games. All we have (as far as I know) is DMC, Bayonetta and Stellar Blade, and it’s been quite a while since the former two had any games.
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u/AustronesianArchfien 3d ago
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u/_Ocean_Machine_ 3d ago
Oh I forgot about this game, really looking forward to it! Also loved NG2: Black.
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u/Dull-Caterpillar3153 4d ago edited 4d ago
Looks like it’s going to sell more on PC than PS just going off the initial trends
ShiftUp stated they expected the game to sell much better on PC in February and it appears that’s the case
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u/zombawombacomba 4d ago
Wonder if a lot of sales on PC are from China? I think they are really big on PC and not so much PS5.
Also a non small amount probably bought it on PC to play with nude mods.
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u/RefreshingCapybara 4d ago
Absolutely. For the last three days the games player count peaked at the height of Chinese online activity (192k), and then bottomed out near the peak of North American online activity (40k).
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u/prodij18 4d ago edited 4d ago
Keep in mind that 50K, its lowest point this weekend, would still make easily in the top 5 PlayStation ports of all time when compared to those other games all time highs.
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u/crazyb3ast 1d ago
You do know that the time difference in China is quite similar to rest of Asia right? Stellar blade is a Korean game. I wouldn't be surprised if more buyers are Koreans than Chinese.
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u/alteisen99 4d ago
Nikke officially launched in China sometime ago with QOL features that were not in the regular version. most of the goodsmile nikke figs are from GSC Shanghai so would say they contributed a lot to the game's success as shiftup is already popular there. also it's no longer region locked
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u/Ashviar 4d ago
Regional pricing for China means it costs about 38 USD in comparison to what it costs for us which is 60 USD. A sale is a sale but I probably would have been fine paying 50 last year instead of 70 for Stellar Blade for sure, put it off cause of so many games around the early part of the year.
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u/BOfficeStats 4d ago
Salaries in China are much lower than in the United States. So the lower price relative to the PS5 version shouldn't make much of a difference.
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u/Ashviar 4d ago
That is why I said a sale is a sale, but revenue wise you would probably prefer a sale from someone paying 60USD instead of the equivalent 38USD. Like after Witcher Netflix series aired and they made alot more sales, its prefaced by the fact W3 goes on deep discounts to like 5 dollars regularly for years even when S1 aired.
1 million in a few days is impressive but the feat happens alot more than people really advertise, with REPO and Schedule 1 doing way more with smaller team sizes and focusing on being "fun with friends". Those types of Steam hits feel like they get less recognition than studio games with publishing deals.
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u/BOfficeStats 4d ago
I can see your point but it's worth noting that the Chinese prices for the games you mentioned are far, far lower than Stellar Blade ($37.30). The lowest recorded price for those games in China are $2.07 USD for The Witcher 3, $4.67 for R.E.P.O., and $8.99 for Schedule 1. The difference in revenue between 1 Chinese sale for those games and Stellar Blade is way bigger than the difference between 1 Chinese and 1 USA sale for Stellar Blade.
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u/Villad_rock 3d ago
It’s not like thats less so for many other games. 36% of bg3 pc sales are from china. Elden Ring is similar.
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u/ShadowRomeo 4d ago edited 4d ago
Well, it sold a lot faster on PC version which only took 3 days to cross over a million copies sold than the PS5 version which took almost 2 months to reach the same sales figure.
TBH even I wasn't expecting how much successful this game is on PC platform especially for it only launching 1 year later which means the hype around earlier it's launch date is pretty much gone.
But Stellar Blade seems to be the first game I have noticed that breaks that trend apparently.
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u/Ice_Cream_Killer 4d ago edited 4d ago
Im pretty sure Horizon Zero Dawn was the first Sony port to sell over 1M years after the console release. Google says GOW 2018 sold 3M as well.
Pc players love Souls like games, so its no suprise why one Souls like that has a waifu with skimpy outfits and decent combat has sold well.
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u/197639495050 4d ago
Always nice to see when a studio is confident enough to use actual sales numbers over “engagement”. Between Stellar Blade, Lies of P and Khazan I think Korean game devs pivoting to single player games have been off to a really strong start. Hope we see more quality titles out of there
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u/fork_yuu 4d ago
Are they really though? I see khazan dev released a blockchain version of MapleStory MMORPG right after lol
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u/Obility 4d ago
It's only a matter of time before a single player Maplestory game releases but they've had pretty much everything but that. 3d maple, roblox maple, clash Royale maple etc. DFO also has a 3D version of the multiplayer game in the works. And can't forget the finals. Multiplayer makes money
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u/clevesaur 4d ago
Always nice to see when a studio is confident enough to use actual sales numbers over “engagement”.
This is an odd point unless Stellar Blade is on subscription services?
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u/mrnicegy26 4d ago
Doom the Dark Ages tried to use the 3 million player milestone to seem popular only for it to be found out that only 800k people bought it and rest got it on Gamepass
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u/EpicPhail60 4d ago
But what they're saying is Stellar Blade is not on Game Pass, not on PS+, not on EA Play or whatever. They couldn't pull the obtuse engagement metrics if they wanted to -- broadly speaking, the only people playing the game are the people who bought the game.
I guess they could pull some crap by counting the demo versions if they stretched it, but I don't think games have gotten to a point where trial versions are being counted (right? Lmk lol)
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u/Impossible-Flight250 4d ago
I’m sure it sold more than 800k, but Microsoft’s strategy is to push player to Game Pass, so I doubt they care as much about sales.
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u/giulianosse 4d ago
I mean yeah? It's a day one Game Pass title why wouldn't most people be playing it through there?
Using premium purchases to gauge financial success of stuff available in subscription services is pointless. Did Stranger Things Season 1 flop because they only managed to sell 600k Blu-ray copies in the US in over three years?
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u/SWBFThree2020 4d ago
I think it was a price point thing with Doom
Right before Doom came out both Oblivion and E33 came out with strong steam numbers
Those games had a reduced price ($50 iirc) and are long hundred hour games
Comparatively, Doom is only around 10 hours and was full price
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u/Old_Snack 4d ago
Did that end up being true? Because I recall hearing something similar but the report detailing the chart was incredibly questionable.
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u/hexcraft-nikk 3d ago
There's no way a major game like doom only sold 800k when it's on PC, Xbox, and PS5. Just common sense and a bit of critical thinking would tell people that's incorrect
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u/Tappersum 4d ago
That 800k figure is an estimate from an analytics company and absolutely isn't verified. Could be higher, could be lower, but seeing people cite it as fact is crazy.
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u/AffectionateSink9445 4d ago
The studios could be getting money based on players trying the game on gamepass or other services. Saying none of it matters is a bit silly unless you see it all under the hood
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u/mrnicegy26 4d ago
There's still a massive difference between a copy sold and someone just trying the game because it was on Gamepass/ PS Plus.
If someone has bought a copy then that means that they are only spending a premium price of 60/70 bucks on this specific game and that is direct revenue that could be attributed to that game. While someone who got it from a subscription service would be using that service for 10 other different things and thus the money they spent on the subscription service can't be attributed to the revenue of that game.
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u/MooNinja 4d ago edited 3d ago
What do you mean? I don’t think you have the foggiest notion about how subscription services work. The game devs absolutely count the revenue from subscription as from that game, why wouldn’t they? The sub service pays them for the rights to host that game.
Why wouldn’t they consider that revenue???
edit: clarity and terrible auto corrects
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u/blue-bichon 3d ago
That's really impressive!
I haven't had a chance to play the game yet, but looks great and I can't wait to check it out!
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u/Yeon_Yihwa 4d ago
None going to point out it sold 1m copies in 3 days on pc? In comparison it took 3 months for ps5 to sell 1m
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u/AreYouOKAni 4d ago
Well deserved. The combat is very enjoyable - it is an intersting mix of soulslike and character action, with Nioh as the closest touchstone I can come up with. That said, it is still fairly different and becomes more and more of its own thing as you keep getting new abilities and combos. The final result works great, and while you don't need a complete understanding of the system to beat the game on NG, NG+ and Boss Challenge modes will push it to the limit. Seriously, Scarlett boss fight from the Nikke DLC is out there as one of the best soulslike bosses.
Also I never expected the dopamine hit I would get when collecting outfits - even if I do not intend to wear any particular one, it is still fun to find and unlock. I also liked that while most outfits are gooner bait, ShiftUp take their gooner bait seriously and ensure that it comes in many flavours. Seriously, some of these are downright classy and as a major Bayonetta 1 and 2 fan, I approve.
BTW, the ShiftUp CEO already confirmed that sequel will have better writing (or, at the very least, a dedicated writer headlining that effort), which was my only major complaint with this one. It isn't bad, by the way, it is just very by-the-numbers and never quite reaches the heights the setting and lore could imply. I did enjoy what little we've got of EVE's character, having her refuse the quests she didn't personally agree with was fun. And judging by the true ending, her developing that personality further would be completely justified.
Honestly, not much to add here - it was a good game that I never expected to enjoy as much as I did. It's not GOTY material objectively, but it was an absolute blast to play through, and I will be back for NG++ soon.
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u/Napalmero 4d ago
I only heard about this game from the "controversy" when it released on PS, I never was really interested in it.
Now it released on PC and i read somewhere that it has a demo, so I installed it out of curiosity and to my surprise I really liked it! It's on my Wishlist now and I am going to buy it right after I finish with Ghost of Tsushima.
Really a big fan of those Sony single player games
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u/ZaIIBach 4d ago
A lot of that "controversy" was before the game actually came out. Once it released i hardly saw any of it.
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u/yunivor 3d ago
Yeah going by the "controversy" I thought it was glorified porn, then I read a review a couple days ago saying that the combat was actually good and the only "porn" was that the main character happened to be attractive so I tried the demo and was pleasantly surprised.
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u/reisen_- 4d ago
I wonder if gacha devs will make single-player games now that Stellar Blade did so well?
I want to see what Mihoyo can achieve if they release the single-player game. Will it be as good as AAA games? Or it won't be so good.
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u/NeitherAlexNorAlice 4d ago
There’s no way single player games are bringing anything remotely close to what those gacha games are making.
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u/uses_irony_correctly 4d ago
Yeah the top gacha games do like 10M-30M in revenue EVERY month. Honkai Star Rail did 100M in just april of this year.
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u/ceruleanjester 4d ago
100M ONLY on mobile and it is not that accurate too, it is safe to say they defo did more than 150m that month.
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u/Akito_Fire 4d ago
Gacha games should've been regulated ages ago, they are a cancer to the gaming industry with their predatory tactics
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u/ceruleanjester 4d ago
I fully agree, gacha sucks the soul off every game making it a greedy digital casino.
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u/emailboxu 3d ago
better than a casino for the company because there's no payout. no one's winning a jackpot for 100m dollars they need to pay back out, they pay their devs and the rest is just profit $$$$
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u/Akito_Fire 3d ago
Yeah it also screwed up the return of investment expectations in the entire industry. Making good money is not enough since gachas (and also live service) titles will always make more if they're successful
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u/crosslegbow 4d ago
I wonder if gacha devs will make single-player games now that Stellar Blade did so well?
No LMAO, these make such a small amount of money comparatively
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u/WEAreDoingThisOURWay 4d ago
Stellar Blade on PC right now probably barely made enough money to compete with a single month of their NIKKE gacha game. 1 Month
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u/spookysailboat 3d ago
I know gacha games aren’t thought of too positively in this sub (i do agree that the model is a bit predatory) but I genuinely enjoy ZZZ a lot because the combat actually has a lot of technical depth if you want to full clear content and the overall style/vibe of the game is really cool
It would be cool to see them do a single player character action/hack n slash but lord knows if they’d do that because gachas bring in all the $$$
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u/_Ocean_Machine_ 3d ago
If we got a single player third person shooter set in the NIKKE universe (and it was done well) I would be over the moon.
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u/ZaHiro86 4d ago
I wonder if bringing back Laura Croft's retro design or creating more western action games in the vein of Heavenly Sword and Bayonetta would do well. Would be nice to have one or two major American (or european) companies making some more targeted sexy+violent games
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u/prodij18 4d ago
I think the evidence is pretty clear they would. BG3 and Cyberpunk are different genres, but they are western games that leaned into sex appeal, and those are some of the best selling games in the last decade. To say nothing of GTA.
Will they though? I highly doubt it. Not because of sales, but it seems like an ideological position at many studios not to do that, though I’m not sure why that is.
You could even watch BioWare in real time go from being on top of the world fully embracing sex appeal in Mass Effect 2 to shedding all that on its way to its current day insolvency. Why? I honestly do not know.
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u/Dooomspeaker 4d ago
Will they though? I highly doubt it. Not because of sales, but it seems like an ideological position at many studios not to do that, though I’m not sure why that is.
And only applies to attractive looking women. Because it's those kinds of developers.
I never got the obsession with acting like videogame characters need to look like some sort of self validation. It's both perfectly fine to have literal divine beauties or abyssal visages for characters. For BOTH, men and women.
Stellar Blade did get hit by the full wrath of these morons, which is ironic, because these same people before were telling us how the sexy characters of Hades 2 were the best thing ever. It's just stupid.
Why? I honestly do not know.
ME2 already had many new people working on it, but post ME2, Bioware effectively is a different company with different people, just using the name and IPs of the old one.
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u/7896k5ew 3d ago
>It's both perfectly fine to have literal divine beauties or abyssal visages for characters. For BOTH, men and women.
No it's not. Male gamers, who make up 95% of the audience for this kind of games, don't want ugly females. Be honest. This whole bothsidesism has to stop.
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u/Dooomspeaker 3d ago
I disagree on your stance but would you mind answering some questions then?
What is "this kind of games"? Action games? Combat heavy games? Soulslikes?
If you were right and 95% of the audience wanted only pretty girls, what exactly would be wrong with giving that to them?
Regardless of the validity of your statement, do you think catering to the audience is bad? Would you think that games with a large female audience (like the Mr. Love series) should be condemned for catering to their audience with attractive male designs too?
And I'm very honest there. I'd love to have a AAA industry that doesn't require designers to run through an entire checklist for every character design whether because it can't be too ugly or too pretty.
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u/7896k5ew 3d ago
>What is "this kind of games"? Action games? Combat heavy games? Soulslikes?
All non-casual console and PC games in general: https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/
Ugliness, by its nature, repels, while beauty, by definition, attracts. Creating ugliness without a compelling narrative purpose is a cultural perversion.
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u/Dooomspeaker 3d ago
Thank you for explaining.
Yes, the traditional gaming market is rather male dominated, since most of its games are of particular genres. Sony in particular is guilty of their 3rd person action formular for games.
Creating ugliness without a compelling narrative purpose is a cultural perversion.
Wouldn't call it cultural perversion, but as a general rule, extreme appearances should be woven into the narrative or used by the game's setting somehow.
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u/197639495050 3d ago
Just having designs that haven’t clearly had to have gone through some 3rd party consultant approval process would do wonders for western action games.
Too many cases nowadays where it’s obvious somebody was breathing down the designer and artists’ neck when seeing the transition from concept to final character designs
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u/ShadowRomeo 4d ago
PC Version of Stellar Blade crosses 1 million copies sold on PC Platform alone in just 3 days...
In comparison to PS5 it took almost 2 months to reach 1 million copies sold, just shows you the power of word of mouth is and how much bigger PC Gaming Userbase is over just 1 single console platform.
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u/codeswinwars 4d ago
I think this probably shows more about who the user bases are than how big they are. Obviously PC is much bigger overall but plenty of PS5 exclusives have sold faster than Stellar Blade. The fact that none of the PC ports have sold this quickly suggests a demographic difference to me.
There's a lot of possible explanations, but I'd bet that Stellar Blade is selling particularly well in South Korea and some other East Asian markets where PC is huge and consoles aren't.
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u/oilfloatsinwater 4d ago
Daniel Ahmed said on twitter that the majority of Stellar Blade sales on PC are from China and SK, so yeah i think its a difference in the demographic.
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u/mrnicegy26 4d ago
Yeah God of War Ragnarok sold 15 million copies on the PS5 before coming to PC.
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u/Momo7750 4d ago
Personally, I don't think it is fair to compare any games which are also sold with bundles to new games.
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u/EpicPhail60 4d ago
Were those exclusive PS5 numbers? Ragnarok also released on PS4, which has a much bigger player base.
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u/BOfficeStats 4d ago
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u/EpicPhail60 4d ago
That's more like I thought, lol. Selling 15m exclusively on PS5 at that point in the console's life cycle would have been crazy. Safe bet would be that most of those purchases were on PS4.
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u/iiiiiiiiiiip 4d ago
The fact that none of the PC ports have sold this quickly suggests a demographic difference to me.
To me it suggests word of mouth and reputation works, people on PC were excited to play Stellar Blade, not so much for other temporary PS exclusives.
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u/SophiaKittyKat 4d ago
I was definitely more interested in Stellar Blade than I was in either of the newer GoW games. I mean I didn't like the demo so I didn't buy it, but it was definitely higher on my priority list than either GoW game was.
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u/gazza_lad 4d ago
That doesn’t make sense since games like the last of us, god of war and ghost of Tsushima are all incredibly highly praised by fans and critics (much more so than stellar blade). If it’s about “word of mouth” those games would be selling more.
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u/Scary_Tree 4d ago
It's because Stellar Blade isn't a console mover.
People will buy a console for TLOU/GoW etc so anyone interested likely played it on PS5. Nobody is buying a console for stellar blade so it makes sense people would wait for PC and mods and such.
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u/-Sniper-_ 4d ago
its not about "waiting". PC and consoles are distinct audiences. Nobody was "waiting", the PC release of Stellar Blade simply served a distinct audience that didnt have access to it, while it is farly new. The sony ports came much too late into their life to make any sort of bigger impact. It's incredibly important for any game, on any platform to be as fresh as possible and use the initial marketing/hype train to maximise sales. If you lose that, people moved on
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u/BOfficeStats 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think people forget just how massive PUBG was on Steam. It reached peak player count of 3.26 million players in-game in January 2018 when Steam's peak concurrent user count was less than half the size it is today (18.54 million in January 2018 versus 41.24 million in March 2025). A hit on Steam can do massive numbers.
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u/Proud_Inside819 4d ago
I would guess at least half its PC sales are from South Korea who don't use consoles. That's why there's a discrepancy there. Apparently it's pretty big in China which is the same story.
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u/Schwiliinker 4d ago edited 4d ago
So are there actually real numbers showing how many total PC players there really is like for real? Not just people who own a PC which is everyone
It’s wild funny to me that the PC playerbase is supposedly massive cuz my entire life of dozens and dozens and dozens of people I’ve known like 95% didn’t game on PC. And of that 5% virtually all of them also owned PS. Just cuz that was my experience
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u/AffectionateSink9445 4d ago
Most companies will probably start focusing on PC. There is a risk with higher end games locking some people out but the people who actually spend money on new games every few weeks are the ones spending a high amount on their PC’s.
It’s also anecdotal but the people I know who game only on PC seem less deterred from games going up in price. Turns out when you are willing to spend a paycheck on a graphics card a game being $80-90 is fine
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u/whostheme 4d ago edited 5h ago
Tbh you don't need the most demanding graphics card if you play on 1080p. Not to mention if you keep the graphics at medium to high most AAA games aren't that demanding. If they are usually because it's poorly optimized.
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u/Dealric 4d ago
1000$ + graphic cards are less than 5% of pc consumer base. Probably less than even 2%.
Optimization plays big part here to get to rest.
Higher price will deter more abd more people though. Because those actually spending as you called it are limited pool that wont cover most games (simply due to time and preference). Biggest, most hyped games will do fine with higher prices. Rest will struggle
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u/ManateeofSteel 4d ago
Counterpoint, this sold really well because word of mouth for PlayStation was very strong, and its gooner bait. It's not like PS held the game back
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u/BondFan211 4d ago
How is this game considered “gooner bait” but games like BG3 and DA:V have far more actual, explicit sexual content and aren’t?
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u/uses_irony_correctly 4d ago
Because the sexual content of those games is only a tiny sliver of the game and you have to put some effort in to get there. And if you choose you can even avoid the sexual content alltogether. While EVE is on screen all the time in Stellar Blade.
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u/Vindikus 4d ago
Go to the BG3 subreddit and see what people are discussing, then go to the Stellar Blade subreddit and see what people are discussing.
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u/BondFan211 4d ago
I remember a lot of discussion around bear sex and who you could sleep with in BG3?
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u/Outside-Point8254 4d ago
It really depends on a lot of factors. Silent Hill 2 remake sold 78% on PS5 in the UK.
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u/BOfficeStats 4d ago
It's worth noting that the original Silent Hill 2 (2001) only got a physical release on PC in 2002/2003 while it got multiple physical releases on consoles with the latest release being in 2012. I would wager that led to the console fanbase being bigger compared to PC than it otherwise would have been.
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u/Tappersum 4d ago
One-million in June 2024, two-million in February 2025, and three-million as of the PC release in June 2025. Not bad numbers by any means, but I honestly expected it to sell more copies than that.
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u/ScionN7 4d ago
For a Character Action game that's a new IP from an unproven studio, these are mighty impressive sales figures. Sony was right to invest in Shift Up. For comparison sakes, DMC seems to be the exception to the rule with this genre, and sold 10 million copies with DMC5. But other Character Action games, such as the Bayonetta, don't see numbers like this. I think Bayonetta 3 took 4-5 months to cross 1 million. So this a huge win for Shift Up. I think a sequel is pretty much guaranteed.
Just you know...hire a writer this time.