Blizzard executives must be very happy right now. And I"m sure this happiness will continue for the foreseeable future. It wasn"t enough that World of Warcraft Classic (as many are calling it now) continues to be a Top 3 seller every month on the PC charts, now we have the expansion The Burning Crusade. If anyone thought that the release wasn"t going to be huge, well they were crazy.
Blizzard happily announced today that The Burning Crusade has just shattered the so-called "day one" sales record and has become the fastest selling PC title ever for both North America and Europe - selling around 2.4 million copies in the first 24 hours alone. Sales on both continents were fairly even, with 1.2 million copies sold in North America on the first day of launch, and about 1.1 million copies in Europe in the first 24 hours. According to Blizzard, more than 1.7 million gamers had already upgraded and logged into the expansion on the first day.
Blizzard had 4 million copies of the game out for eager gamers to suck up, with over 5,000 stores around the world ready to open at midnight on launch day to feed the need. Retailers are reporting continued demand for the game (duh) and Blizzard as you can guess is quite "happy" about the turn out.
" The Burning Crusade has already exceeded even our most ambitious expectations," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. " We"re pleased that so many players are eager to see all of the new content that the expansion has to offer, and we look forward to seeing everyone online as additional players continue to upgrade in the days ahead."
" The immediate popularity of The Burning Crusade once again shows that Blizzard consistently delivers what gamers want," said Robert McKenzie, senior vice president of merchandising at GameStop Corp. " In addition to setting a new day-one PC-game sales record at our GameStop and EB Games stores, the expansion garnered more online pre-orders than any other PC game in our company"s history."
So there you have it my friends, The Burning Crusade, like the classic game before it, has now made history. Did anyone really think it wouldn"t? I"m sure it will continue to sell extremely well for quite awhile, and I wouldn"t be surprised at all if those 4 million copies get sold within the first month or less.
Look for a Neowin review of The Burning Crusade shortly.