Skyrim Ships An Amazing Amount of Copies, Breaks Steam Records

By Eric L. Patterson, Executive Editor
Posted on December 15, 2011 AT 06:19pm

THE BUZZ: Coming as little surprise to anyone, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been a hit on both consoles and PC. Today, the game’s publisher announced just how well it’s done.

In terms of copies shipped, ZeniMax Media has distributed 10 million physical copies of Skyrim in the month since the game’s launch. As we mentioned last week, Skyrim has already almost outsold the entire lifetime sales of the previous Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion—a feat it will easily accomplish.

On the PC side, Skyrim not only outsold other PC games by a factor of three to one in November, but the digital version became the fastest selling title in Steam’s history.

As part of today’s announcement, ZeniMax also stated that sales of Skyrim to this point already represent around $650 million in revenue.

EGM’s TAKE: Congrats to ZeniMax and Bethesda Softworks for their success with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Eric L. Patterson got started via self-publishing game-related fanzines in junior high, and now has one goal in life: making sure EGM has as much coverage of niche Japanese games as can realistically be crammed in. Eric’s also active in the gaming community on a personal level, being an outspoken voice on topics such as equality in gaming and consumer rights. Stalk Eric on Twitter: @Eric_EGM. Meet the rest of the crew.