Hogwarts Legacy – this news accompanies a patch that removes many bugs, including the spiders (pic: WB Games)
As the game launches for last gen systems and gets a spiffy arachnophobia mode, Hogwarts Legacy is revealed to still be selling very well.
Despite the ongoing controversies and backlash the Harry Potter franchise faces (or perhaps thanks to them), Hogwarts Legacy has proven to be a huge success for Warner Bros.
Last month, the publisher revealed that the game had blown its projections out of the water, essentially guaranteeing a sequel and probably many other Harry Potter games as well.
In case you thought the hype would soon fade away, that couldn’t be further from the truth. A sales update from Warner Bros. reveals that Hogwarts Legacy has now sold more than 15 million units and made more than $1 billion (approximately £793 million) worldwide.
Warner Bros. adds that this makes Hogwarts Legacy the company’s biggest launch to date and the fifth gaming franchise it owns to make at least $1 billion.
For the curious, the other four are Mortal Kombat, DC Comics, the Lego games, and Game Of Thrones.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, in an earnings call transcribed by VGC, also reminds everyone that the game is now available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, meaning those sales figures are only going to keep growing.
For anyone worried that its eventual Nintendo Switch port will meet the same fate as Midnight Suns’ and be cancelled, Zaslav assured everyone that it’s still on track for July 25.
In fact, JB Perrette, CEO of global streaming and games, says they actually have much higher expectations for the Switch version, especially in the Japanese market.
‘We see that as probably a much bigger install base and a fanbase that, as relates to the franchise of Harry Potter, which obviously appeals to a very big audience globally, and in markets like Japan where Nintendo has a big footprint and Harry Potter skews very strongly in terms of popularity, we see a much bigger upside probably from that release, certainly than the Gen 8 [release],’ he says.
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The launch of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions was accompanied by a major patch that promises over 500 fixes, which you can read in full over on the official website.
The most notable and welcome addition, however, is an arachnophobia mode. Hogwarts Legacy has some nasty looking spiders, far nastier than you’d expect in an all-ages franchise, but toggling the mode changes how spider enemies look, turns spider corpses invisible, and reduces and removes the sounds they make.
Arachnophobia modes will hopefully become a bit more common place as only a small handful of games make use of them. Another recent launch, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, has a similar toggle, whereas Grounded offers multiple options for how the spiders can look.
Then you have something like factory builder Satisfactory where turning arachnophobia mode on just replaces the spider-like enemies with pictures of cute cats. Although you can see why they didn’t do that for Hogwarts Legacy.
Hogwarts Legacy is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC. A Nintendo Switch version is scheduled for July 25.
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As the game launches for last gen systems and gets a spiffy arachnophobia mode, Hogwarts Legacy is revealed to still be selling very well.