Hogwarts Legacy is based on the Wizarding World universe created by J.K. Rowling. You can read more about Rowling’s history of transphobic remarks as well as find resources to support LGBTQ organizations here.
Hogwarts Legacy was released in early February. The game isn’t even three months old, yet it has already solidified its status as one of the most popular (and profitable) entries in the Wizarding World.
Earlier today, Warner Bros. published a press release to celebrate the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One releases of Hogwarts Legacy. However, the most important takeaways from the document were the game’s sales numbers. According to the press release, Hogwarts Legacy has surpassed 15 million sales and grossed over $1 billion worldwide.
In the world of video games, these numbers are beyond impressive, though not unheard of. For instance, the 2018 God of War soft reboot has sold over 23 million units, but that game took much longer to reach that milestone (God of War didn’t break 15 million sales until 2021). Still, one cannot understate just how big of a landmark Hogwarts Legacy’s accomplishment is, especially when compared to the rest of the franchise.
Most notably, the Harry Potter film series has grossed billions of dollars in total, but each entry has contributed a different amount to that total. Those individual box office grosses are mostly in the hundreds of millions dollars range, often just shy of 1 billion dollars. Only two Harry Potter movies have amassed more than $1 billion in revenue: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Although to be fair, the latter wouldn’t have passed the $1 billion mark if it hadn’t been rereleased several times. Regardless, Hogwarts Legacy has technically outgrossed most Harry Potter movies. The game could easily surpass $2 billion in sales in the foreseeable future.
To be fair, movie ticket prices ranged from around $5 to $10 when the Harry Potter films were released. Meanwhile, Hogwarts Legacy launched with a price tag of $70 (more for the deluxe edition). That discrepancy obviously means that Hogwarts Legacy had to sell fewer copies to reach this mark than the Harry Potter films sold tickets. Even still, $70 is obviously a pretty big ask when it comes to entertainment. Other Harry Potter games have been released at around the $50 to $60 price mark, and they never came close to reaching these kinds of numbers.
Furthermore, Hogwarts Legacy wasn’t even available on PS4 and Xbox One until today, and the Switch version has yet to be released. That’s a big part of the reason why these figures are expected to go up from here.
Of course, Hogwarts Legacy was also released in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling noted above. That controversy obviously had little negative impact on the game’s overall sales. Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto recently suggested that the Super Mario movie’s box office success may have been helped by some of its negative publicity, and the same could be true here. At the very least, it seems there were a lot of Harry Potter fans waiting for a new Wizarding World adventure that is at least better than the Fantastic Beast movies.
The question now is whether or not Hogwarts Legacy can become 2023’s best-selling video game. While titles like Tears of the Kingdom, Starfield, and Final Fantasy 16 will give it tough competition, Hogwarts Legacy‘s strong start, multiplatform availability, and familiar IP all suggest it could make one of our seemingly bold video game predictions for the year come true.