Black Fable: Wukong’s first week of gross sales numbers are in, they usually firmly inhabit “Do not take a giant sip of espresso earlier than you take a look at them” territory. 10 million units sold, which, as trade analyst Daniel Ahmad pointed out on X, “The All the things App,” is a record-breaking efficiency that leaves among the greatest releases of the previous few years within the mud.
For perspective, listed here are some comparative numbers:
The one sport that comes shut is Palworld’s 19 million gamers in two weeks, a mark that Black Fable: Wukong appears on observe to surpass. It is a gross sales determine that traces up with Wukong having leapfrogged the competitors to be the #2 most-played sport in Steam’s historical past by concurrent gamers. Earlier than that, it was additionally essentially the most wishlisted sport on the platform after The Day Earlier than met its ignominious finish.
However Wukong is clearly a a lot better sport than the earlier wishlist champ. PC Gamer affiliate editor Tyler Colp awarded it an 87% in our evaluation of Black Fable: Wukong, praising it as a extra approachable interpretation of Souls-style fight, differentiating itself from FromSoftware as a substitute of slavishly imitating the king of the style. The sense of caprice and magic is what has me actually curious to strive it, although, with among the conditions Tyler describes within the sport sounding like the most effective form of Witcher quests the place Geralt has to hash issues out with a troll or forest sprite or one thing.
The first driver of Wukong’s gross sales success is its recognition in China, the place developer Recreation Science is predicated. Video games trade analyst agency Niko has an in-depth article by Daniel Ahmad breaking this down. 93% of Wukong’s Steam critiques are in simplified Chinese language, and Steam shattered its earlier obtain bandwidth document (set throughout Cyberpunk’s launch) by a whopping 28 terabytes per second on Wukong’s August 20 launch—82% of that site visitors originated in East Asia. Gameplay movies and previews of Wukong have additionally been dominating Chinese language social networks like bilibili.
We are able to possible count on comparable success tales because the Chinese language video games trade experiments with extra big-budget releases like Wukong. There’s even one other one proper across the nook: Though it is a very totally different type of sport—a dwell service multiplayer shooter and never a cinematic single participant marketing campaign—Mecha Break is bringing some critical flash and manufacturing values to its Gundam-inspired tackle hero shooters.