Hogwarts Legacy, despite all its shortcomings, proved one of the most highly-anticipated games of the year and has become Warner Bros. Games and developer Avalanche Software’s biggest launch to date.
According to the publisher, the open-world RPG based on the Harry Potter franchise has sold more than 12 million units globally, equating to $850 million in sales across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, surpassing all of Warner Bros. previous game launches combined.
That’s not the only good news. Since launch, the game has also achieved a fair few milestones and accolades including; reaching 1.28 million peak concurrent viewers on Twitch making it the biggest single-player game ever on the platform, breaking company records with over 280 million hours played, and a collab with Wizarding World Digital allowed the site to garner 300 per cent higher traffic over the monthly unique visitor average within the first 10 days of February. Bravo.
“We are so thrilled and proud to see the player response to Hogwarts Legacy from gamers, fans who are new to gaming and reviewers around the world,” said David Haddad, President, Warner Bros. Games. “Our development team at Avalanche delivered an amazing, high-quality Wizarding World experience that truly fulfils the fan fantasy of life at Hogwarts and our publishing teams have executed a globally impactful launch campaign.”
Despite all this, Hogwarts Legacy is not without its flaws. Mixing the good with the bad, the game has had some teething problems especially on PC. Though far from a buggy mess as say, CyberPunk 2077 at launch, the game does suffer from poor optimisations often causing it to run rather poorly even on the most powerful rigs. Fortunately, the Internet has found ways to bypass these immersion breaking woes, at least until Avalanche officially remedies the situation.
For now, the game is currently available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, while previous-gen consoles including the PS4 and Xbox One will get a separate launch on April 4, followed by Nintendo Switch on July 25. We wonder how it will fair on aging hardware seeing as how demanding the title is even on current-gen consoles and PC, so it might pay to wait for reviews before considering a pre-order.
