Despite Launch Issues, SimCity Sells 1.1 Million Copies

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SimCity still sold well despite launch issues.

It's a testimony to the popularity of the series that, despite the slew of server issues at launch, SimCity still managed to sell 1.1 million copies within its first two weeks. Apparently, this is the biggest launch yet for the city building series.

SimCity's sales numbers also reveal the ever-rising, soon-to-be-dominant power of digital in the industry. 54% of players opted to download the game instead of purchasing the game at retail. 44% of total SimCity sales went through EA's digital distribution platform Origin.

News of SimCity's disastrous launch were well-documented, not to mention predictable, especially when Maxis announced that there would be no pre-loading of the game. It leads one to wonder though… how well could have SimCity sold had server issues not been the hot topic of games media for the past two weeks?

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Catherine Cai
Topics
EA
Gaming
30 Comments Comment from the forums
  • joytech22
    While it did sell a few copies, it isn't a stellar seller.
    I did however enjoy the free game giveaway they were doing and scored a free Dead Space 3.
    Reply
  • blackjackcf
    joytech22While it did sell a few copies, it isn't a stellar seller.I did however enjoy the free game giveaway they were doing and scored a free Dead Space 3.
    It's definitely no Diablo III, but I think the amount of copies it sold is still pretty impressive considering the really negative backlash it got from the server issues.

    - Catherine Cai
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    A group of hackers will eventually figure out how to emulate an EA server to make an offline mode. Like Diablo 3 and how office 2010/2013, win7/8 is activated
    Reply
  • neotran
    They dont say how many were refund after the 2nd week
    Reply
  • bustapr
    last sentence may change the title to "because of server issues, simcity only sells 1.1 million".
    Reply
  • edogawa
    You know what they say, there's a sucker is born every minute.
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    danwat1234A group of hackers will eventually figure out how to emulate an EA server to make an offline mode. Like Diablo 3 and how office 2010/2013, win7/8 is activatedThere are reports of some success with that: http://www.myce.com/news/simcity-hacked-for-offline-play-drm-to-blame-for-disaster-66477/
    Reply
  • rantoc
    The question is not if this will be a success or not, many pre-ordered... think they will do it the next time and risking a suxess?
    Reply
  • aggroboy
    danwat1234A group of hackers will eventually figure out how to emulate an EA server to make an offline mode. Like Diablo 3 and how office 2010/2013, win7/8 is activatedI don't think anyone managed to get a working D3 server for this yet, correct me if I'm wrong.
    Reply
  • wildkitten
    danwat1234A group of hackers will eventually figure out how to emulate an EA server to make an offline mode. Like Diablo 3 and how office 2010/2013, win7/8 is activatedIt doesn't need to emulate a server. Nothing is dont on server side. This was talked about by an anonymous EA employee when they were talking about how easy it would be to make single player be offline capable. It's already been shown that the game still plays for a long time after someone physically disconnects their internet connection which shows it only makes random checks every so often to make sure it's connected to the servers. The main issue would be saved games would need to be made to be saved locally which im sure some hacker will easily be able to do.
    Reply