Electronic Arts dropped a Titan, and gamers happily handed over $60 for a ride.
The game publisher revealed today that it sold 925,000 physical copies of Titanfall for Xbox One and PC in the U.S. during its fiscal fourth quarter. The figure comes from industry-sales-tracking firm The NPD Group and accounts for retail sales in the three weeks from the sci-fi shooter’s March 11 debut to March 31. Titanfall is the first game from studio Respawn Entertainment, which comprises of a number of former developers of the ultrapopular Call of Duty series from publisher Activision. Titanfall’s success not only helped EA’s Q4 bottom line, but it also aided Microsoft in its efforts to move Xbox One hardware, as the shooter isn’t available on Sony’s competing PlayStation 4.
“We told you to hold on for Titanfall, and boy did it land and land strong,” EA chief operating officer Peter Moore said in a conference call with investors. This wasn’t a video call, so we can’t confirm whether he then jumped into a robot and started shooting everything in sight.
While 925,000 units is impressive, that number does not include worldwide or digital sales since NPD does not track those for its report, so this is only a small portion of the game’s full performance. We’ve reached out to EA for more, and will update this post with any new information.
Titanfall was the best-selling title in March and helped draw gamers’ attention to Microsoft’s latest home console, which is having a tough time keeping up with the less-expensive PlayStation 4. Since both consoles debuted in November, Microsoft has shipped 5 million Xbox Ones to retailers while Sony has sold 7 million PS4s to customers. And those numbers look closer than they really are, since Microsoft isn’t saying how may of those 5 million it has actually sold to customers. Sony is not employing that sort of fuzzy math. Microsoft positioned Titanfall as the big release that would help turn that trend around. While Titanfall sold well, PS4 still outsold Xbox One in March.
