World War Z sales have surpassed the 1 million units mark in its first week. The figures have been compiled from PC, PS4, and Xbox One sales of the game throughout the world and they certainly have been impressive, especially since the game has launched on PC as an Epic Games Store exclusive. This new game hitting the 1 million units milestone in less than a week may show that developers don’t necessarily need Steam to be a success.
If you’ve been living under a rock, World War Z is a brand-new co-op zombie shooter from Saber Interactive that is very much in the style of games like Left 4 Dead. The game is based on the 2013 movie starring Brad Pitt that was loosely based on Max Brooks’ book of the same name. Nearly six years later, World War Z has come out in a gaming environment that could have been argued to be a bit tired of zombie shooters — and somehow, it’s managing to succeed.
“Overall the U.S. and EU have been equally strong in sales,” Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch said according to VentureBeat. “We have had 70,000 people playing at once across all platforms, with very similar distribution among PC (Epic Games Store), PS4 and Xbox. What surprises us is the fact that sales outside of the U.S. on the Epic Store have been so strong, with the U.S. being only [one-quarter] of sales.”
While the success of the initial World War Z sales is undeniable (especially with it topping the UK physical charts this week), its viewership on Twitch has been another matter. Concurrent viewers cratered after only two days, sliding from a high of 133,000 concurrent viewers down to 26,000 concurrent viewers in the first 48 hours. Twitch viewership had continued to decline according to TwitchTracker, although it’s recently seen a bump back up to a peak of nearly 37,000 yesterday.
World War Z sales have been pretty strong for its debut week, but the true measure of a multiplayer game is how well it can build, maintain, and grow an online community. That is something we’ll discover in the coming weeks.
