Skyrim might have actually made $1 billion at launch - that's $350m more than was previously thought

gamesradar.com:

New figures suggest that Skyrim may have made $1 billion at launch, that's $350 million more than what was originally thought. 

As reported by Tweak Town (opens in new tab), Twitter user and numbers researcher Timur222 (opens in new tab) has revealed that Skyrim may have actually made $1 billion in sales back when it was released in 2011, despite Bethesda previously claiming that the game had sold 10 million copies - meaning it had made $650 million - in its first month of release. 

ZeniMax Media/Bethesda Softworks game budgets + other information. (based on known data from 1986 till the present) pic.twitter.com/himk3yTda3September 13, 2022

These new figures came from the LinkedIn page of Alex Price (opens in new tab) - who worked as the European brand and marketing manager for Bethesda between 2010 and 2013. According to the page, Skyrim "generated $1B in the first 30 days - outperforming forecasts by 35%." What this means is that back when Skyrim was released in 2011, Bethesda expected it to generate $650 million in revenues when it actually earned 35% more than that.

Thanks to Price and Timurr222 though, we now know that Skyrim may have actually made $1 billion in revenue when it launched. That's $350 million more than what was originally forecasted. Speaking in today's terms, that would actually mean $1.3 billion with inflation. So it's safe to say that Skyrim had a pretty successful launch for Bethesda. 

With this in mind, it will be interesting to see how the likes of the upcoming Bethesda title Starfield will perform when it launches in 2023. It's fair to say that the sci-fi RPG has got a lot of excitement surrounding it so we wouldn't be surprised if it had similar success to Skyrim upon launch. 

Have you had