Dragon Age: The Veilguard Faces ‘Uphill Battle’ to Match Inquisition’s Launch Sales, Says Analyst
Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched on October 31, and we’ve already got a tiny window into how well it’s selling. It debuted at No.6 on Circana’s report of the top selling games in the US for the full month, just after Metaphor: ReFantazio. But its placement on a single chart doesn’t quite tell the full story.
We reached out to analyst Mat Piscatella at Circana following the report to get a little more info on just how well Veilguard was doing, and he offered some context. Though it might look like Dragon Age is being soundly beaten by a number of other debut titles for the month of October, he notes that Dragon Age launched on October 31, and the chart tracks through November 2. So Dragon Age only had three days of sales reflected in the chart, while most other games on it had significantly more.
Additionally, Piscatella pointed out that EA does not provide Steam data for the best-selling titles charts, so while other games (including Metaphor) had Steam digital sales reflected, Dragon Age’s numbers are only for PlayStation and Xbox.
“Were Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s PC volume included it would have placed higher on the best-selling titles chart — perhaps as high as 3rd overall,” he says. “Unfortunately, however, digital sales are included in these specific charts only at the discretion of the publisher.”
For more info, we asked Piscatella if there was any way to compare The Veilguard’s launch sales to its Dragon Age predecessors, but Circana’s weekly data only goes back to 2018, so no dice there. However, Piscatella did have some analysis to add about how things were going:
“Just looking at the first days of sales and initial engagement levels via Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker, it’s been a good – but not great – launch,” he said. “Dragon Age: The Veilguard did not reach the launch week sales levels of either Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth or Dragon’s Dogma II, and it will be a bit of an uphill battle to reach Inquisition’s lifetime sales. But again, it’s very early and a lot of the story is left to be told. November will give us a much better read.”
Though we don’t have sales numbers for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Square Enix has said they did not meet their internal expectations. Meanwhile, Capcom reported that Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a success for them, having passed 2.5 million copies sold as of this past April. We do have a bit more comparison context through sales numbers in the UK, courtesy of GamesIndustry.biz. Dragon Age: The Veilguard debuted at No.7 on UK sales charts, but its first week sales were over 18% lower than those of Dragon’s Dogma 2 and nearly 21% below those of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth.
We gave The Veilguard a 9/10 in our review, writing that it “refreshes and reinvigorates this storied series with enjoyable action combat, a fantastic cast of companions, and moving character writing.” Opinions on it have varied, though, including among our own staff. You can form your own opinion if you haven’t yet, as Veilguard is already getting a price drop for Black Friday.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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