D&D General All known sales of Dungeons & Dragons video games

[Paul Farquhar]

NWN is mostly an easy to use toolset. The campaign it shipped with was painfully bad. Which at least makes it an example of how not to write a CRPG narrative.

 

[Zardnaar]

No love for Warriors of the Eternal Sun and Mystara games.

 

[Dasientec]

I’ve run into the same issue hunting for sales numbers. Pulling data from scattered interviews and reports is pretty much the only way, so your compiled list is genuinely useful.

 

[TheHand]

Interesting to see that Ruins of Myth Drannor and ToEE underperformed compared to their contemporaries, but I remember reviews back in the day complaining both were very buggy (eventually I played ToEE from gog.com - not a bad dungeon crawler, sticks very close to the original module).

I didn’t see the Eye of the Beholder series, which seemed like pretty popular follow-ups to the SSI games. I wonder how well they actually sold?

 

[Reynard]

Neverwinter Nights was technically the first cRPG I ever played, so I have major nostalgia for it. I know people tend to consider it inferior to Baldur's Gate, but teenage me loved it while BG failed to capture my interest.

No one remembers the original NWN -- the AOL MMORPG.

 

[Gradine]

No one remembers the original NWN -- the AOL MMORPG.

 

[ECMO3]

After hearing how well Baldur's Gate 3 sold, I was curious to know what the overall sales are for all the games. I quickly came to realize that there is no overall tally of the sales, so I did the next best thing and researched the reported sales I could find for individual games and added them together:

1.) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain (1982) - 698,000

2.) Strategic Simulations' Dungeons & Dragons games (1988-1993) - 2 million

3.) Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft (1996) - 150,000

4.) Baldur's Gate (1998) - 2.8 million

5.) Planescape: Torment (1999) - 400,000

6.) Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) - 2 million

7.) Icewind Dale I and II (2000-2002) - 580,000

8.) Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (2001) - 1 million

9.) Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (2001) - 150,000

10.) Neverwinter Nights (2002) - 2.2 million

11.) The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) - 128,000

12.) Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition (2012) - 1 million

13.) Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) - 15 million

So altogether, that would add up to 28,106,000 million copies. Surprisingly, I found many reports of sales for earlier games, but had a hard time finding reports of sales for many games after 2003, which incidentally may give a little bit of an idea as to how well those unreported games sold. If many later games selling less is truly the case, then I imagine the overall figure of all the games would be somewhere around the 35-40 million mark. If any of you happen to know of more data, I'd appreciate to see it.

Sources:

1.) Intellivision Lives! (1998)

2.) https://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1994&pub=2&id=117

3.) https://web.archive.org/web/20180618001634/https://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=696724

4.) https://www.newspapers.com/article/edmonton-journal/89325400/

5.) https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10604

6.) https://web.archive.org/web/20051106013711/http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/

7.) https://web.archive.org/web/20121017165955/http://www.edge-online.com/features/top-100-pc-games-21st-century/

8.) https://www.ign.com/articles/2003/03/24/dark-alliance-ii-announced

9.) https://web.archive.org/web/20140811010123/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/91838/Acquisitions_Propel_Ubi_Soft_Sales_Up_72.php

10.) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-oct-12-fi-games12-story.html

11.) https://web.archive.org/web/20050405233402/http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=9052

12.) https://www.newspapers.com/article/edmonton-journal/89325400/

13.) https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/dublin-firm-behind-baldurs-gate-game-posts-249m-profit-after-runaway-success/a2033961431.html

So what about Sword Coast Legends and NWN 2?

 

[Mecheon]

So what about Sword Coast Legends and NWN 2?

No reported sales I'd imagine, unless you can find them

Plenty of other games missing from the mix that just wouldn't have overall sales amount available, like stuff like the old Famicon exclusive ones

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Interesting stuff, thanks!

 

[Stormonu]

Is it sad I've bought all these games and haven't finished one of them? Probably not even 50% any of them