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Since its release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC last February, developer Avalanche’s Hogwarts Legacy has continued to sell well. It has maintained the top position almost every month for best-selling games in the U.S., too. Thanks to a new interview at Variety with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment president David Haddad, we now know Hogwarts Legacy has surpassed 22 million copies sold and it did so in less than a year.
Haddad told Variety that Hogwarts Legacy crossed the 22 million mark at the end of 2023, picking up 2 million alone in December. He says it’s the best-selling game of the year “in the entire industry worldwide.” Typically, that title goes to a Call of Duty or other triple-A release.
“But it’s not just the unit sold that I’m so proud of, it’s just that it delighted the fans so much,” Haddad tells the publication. “It brought Harry Potter to life in a new way for gamers where they could be themselves in this world, in this story. And that’s what the team at Avalanche set out to do when they were developing the game and I think that’s really why it resonated so well and remains the best-selling game of the year in the entire industry worldwide.”
Hogwarts Legacy was also the top trending search for games on Google in 2023. While many players were likely searching for new trailers, gameplay, and guides for the game, there’s no doubt some of the Google searching for the game stemmed from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s inflammatory statements about the trans community. Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive says Rowling was not involved with the creation of Hogwarts Legacy, which was developed by Avalanche, but given it’s based on the Harry Potter franchise she created, she undoubtedly made money off of it.
Elsewhere in Variety’s report, Haddad touches on something Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told shareholders during the company’s Q3 earnings call in November of last year. During it, Zaslav said the company’s gaming focus is on transforming its biggest franchises from largely console and PC with 3-to-4-year release schedules to include “more always-on gameplay through live services, multi-platform, and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms,” according to Variety.
Haddad told Variety that to achieve that, it needs to accumulate “live games launched with new content, keeping our mobile games services vibrant, and large launching new content.” Notably, Hogwarts Legacy is not a live-service game, nor does it feature any multiplayer components. It is a single-player game, and the best-selling game of 2023, according to its publisher.
However, Warner Bros. will soon dive into the world of live-service games when Batman Arkham trilogy developer Rocksteady releases its multiplayer third-person shooter Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League on February 2.
For more about Hogwarts Legacy and Warner Bros.’s wider gaming plans, be sure to read Variety’s full report here.
Were you one of the 22 million people who bought Hogwarts Legacy last year? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments below!