Launching a new game is always a risk, just ask Arkane about Redfall or Square Enix about Forspoken. But one factor that helps is for the game to be set in a universe already beloved with millions of global fans baked in, and, of course, for that game to be pretty good. Despite some detractors, EA and Respawn Entertainment's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order fulfilled both those criteria, but the magnitude of its success was still a surprise. With more than 20 million players, Fallen Order inevitably spawned a sequel. While Survivor has made headlines for its performance issues, especially on PC, it nevertheless garnered positive reviews, including here at TheGamer. Critical opinion largely agrees that Survivor is an improvement on the previous game, with an expanded world and gameplay. What's perhaps more surprising, considering the size of the install base of PS5 and Xbox Series compared to the previous gen, is how well Survivor has sold compared to Fallen Order at their respective launches. The head of GamesIndustry.biz Christopher Dring has been crunching the numbers and has found that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has beaten Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order's launch sales by more than 30 percent, which is a pretty big margin.
However, it's interesting to note, as Dring does, that Survivor actually has 35 percent lower opening sales than its predecessor but this only accounts for physical boxes sales and not digital. When accounting for digital, sales of Survivor surpass Fallen Order's launch as Survivor's digital sales account for almost double what Fallen Order managed.
In addition, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was the UK's second biggest game launch of this year so far, sitting behind Hogwars Legacy but far ahead of Resident Evil 4 in 2023's list of fastest-selling boxed games in the UK. It's also significant considering that Jedi: Survivor has a much higher retail price than what Jedi: Fallen Order sold for.
Breaking down the physical sales further, 82 percent of Survivor's sales were on the PlayStation 5, while 18 percent was through Xbox Series X/S. But this ratio will likely be quite different with digital also factored in considering how popular digital is on Xbox. All in all, despite the widely reported performance issues, which EA and Respawn are hard at work on fixing, The Force is strong with Survivor's popularity so far.