In the three days since its launch, Wolverine has sold through 1.9M copies (1M in pre-launch digital pre-orders), generating $130M. Of these revenues, 22.9% were physical. As always, these estimates don’t include unsold retail copies, which publishers often report in their sold-in numbers.
Wolverine’s early success means it just passed Death Stranding 2‘s lifetime PS5 copies sold and revenues ($129M and 1.8M copies). And Wolverine is already the top-performing new PlayStation Studios game on PS5 this year, leapfrogging:
MLB The Show ($99M and 1.5M copies sold on PS5)
Marathon ($60M and 1.8M copies sold across all platforms)
Saros ($40M, 510K sold on PS5)
Marvel Tōkon ($49M and 740K sold across all platforms)
Wolverine‘s top market, by a landslide, is the US, accounting for 53% of the player base, followed by the UK (7%), France (5%), and Canada (4%). Logan is Canadian, after all.
In terms of pricing, Wolverine costs $70 in the US but the equivalent of $93.62 in the UK (+33.8% on the US price), $91.84 in Euro countries (+31.2%), and $64.30 (-7.2%) in Canada. Hometown mates’ rates.
So yes, Wolverine has sold well so far. But you’d never guess from the DiScOuRsE.
Wolverine has been a sales success so far, despite some negativity
If you’ve been following any enthusiast game circles, first of all: I hope you’re okay – it’s grim out there. But also, you’ll have seen plenty of people absolutely blasting Wolverine over its handholding, linearity, and move away from Insomniac’s typical colourful visual identity.
While I agree with many of these criticisms of Wolverine, as does much of the press (as seen in its 77 Metacritic score, Insomniac’s lowest non-DLC score in over a decade), most of the folks chatting shite online haven’t played Wolverine. Most of the viral criticism came before the street date.
I’m enjoying some things about the game too, mostly the characters and the combat animations (Liam McIntyre’s Logan is a highlight for me). But yes, candidly, Wolverine doesn’t do much to move the genre forward, and it feels a little disjointed in parts.
You can really see that Insomniac struggled with the design and development of Wolverine. Some aspects feel like hangovers of an older, open-world-focused build that’s been repurposed, while other segments feel hollow and almost random design-wise.
But this makes sense given how many high-profile leads left during development. It reminds me a bit of the whole Uncharted 4 debacle, where Amy Hennig and her game director left Naughty Dog mid-project, the game reportedly had some open-world ideas, then Druckmann and Straley came in to salvage the project. The 2023 Insomniac leak pretty plainly listed Wolverine’s open-world ambitions.
The difference is Naughty Dog pulled it together into a masterpiece that sold 2.7M in week one (on a 40M PS4 install base). Wolverine probably won’t manage that (and on a 95M installed base), but Wolverine‘s audience is likely a more casual one.
Obviously, social media algorithms reward and amplify outrage – manufactured and real – creating a cycle of negativity that isn’t representative of the situation (‘’woke flopped this game!!!’’)
The situation is that Wolverine is now the #6 top-grossing PS5 game of the year, despite only being on the market for a few days:
And when we launch-align how many copies these other games sold on PlayStation after three days, Wolverine is selling quicker. After three days, via sold-through copies:
NBA 2K27 generated $127M on PS5, 2.4% less than Wolverine
Resident Evil Requiem generated $98M, 24.7% less
007 First Light ($67M), 48.8% less
AC Black Flag Resynced generated $66M, 49.5% less
Crimson Desert, another 77-Metacritic game, generated $59M, 54.8% less
And when we look at the top PlayStation Studios games from the past three years by revenue (the games we covered here), Wolverine now sits at #7, having passed Death Stranding 2.
Again, launch-aligned, Wolverine has actually sold better than all of these games except Spider-Man 2 ($250M in three days, almost double Wolverine). As for the others’ revenue three days after launch:
Ghost of Yōtei made $121.9M, 6.3% less than Wolverine
Death Stranding 2 made $51.7M, 60.3% less
Astro Bot made $34.6M, 73.3% less
Stellar Blade made $32.7M, 74.9% less
Rise of the Ronin made $25.7M, 80.3% less
Helldivers 2 made $18.9M, 85.5% less
Of course, many of these other games didn’t have a brand as big as Wolverine, and some had longer tails (for many reasons, including a GOTY win and Steam virality). And Wolverine‘s tail has, of course, been limited somewhat by the tepid media reaction and the social-media blasting.
That said, Wolverine is the type of game that resonates more with casual audiences outside of our circles. Like the Spider-Man games, it’ll likely see lifts at the holidays (it’s mature, sure, but it’ll still be on plenty of Christmas lists, let’s be honest), when physical typically shifts more – for obvious reasons.
And it’ll get a halo effect from the MCU’s imminent move into the X-Men, which already kicked off in the latest Spider-Man movie (Brand New Day introduced Jean Grey and the MCU’s first mutant villain), with Avengers: Doomsday coming on December 18 to kick off the mutant saga.
Oh, and I can see a bunch of the GTA 6 crowd who upgrade to a PS5 picking this one up too, once they’re all GTA-d out.
Who’s playing Wolverine?
Many of the folks buying Wolverine are not the people fighting about it (as ever), and the overlap data makes that pretty plain.Wolverine‘s buyers so far are, above everything else, superhero-game diehards.
About 82% have played the original Insomniac Spider-Man, 70% Spider-Man 2, and 67% Miles Morales. That’s more than even Fortnite (65%). Batman turns up via the DC side via Arkham Knight (45%) and the recent Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight (15%), Marvel Rivals shows heavy crossover (43%), and there’s a long tail of more niche games.
There’s plenty of crossover with the underperforming Suicide Squad, Gotham Knights, and Guardians of the Galaxy (banger!), plus DC Universe Online, Midnight Suns, and this year’s Marvel Tōkon. If a superhero game exists, Wolverine‘s audience has probably given it a go.
There’s also a cohort who buy all the new linear releases, shown by high-ish shares for Black Flag Resynced (17%), Crimson Desert (14%), and Resident Evil Requiem (21%). The PlayStation first-party faithful showed up too, with strong crossover for Ghost of Yōtei and Astro Bot, and even around 8% for this year’s Saros and Marvel Tōkon.
But a more relevant signal is what Wolverine‘s launch-window buyers have actually been playing this month (yes we have that data!). The top 10 is as follows:
Fortnite: 16.30%)
Marvel Rivals: 10.57%)
Spider-Man 2: 9.45%)
GTA 5: 9.18%)
Roblox: 8.69%)
NBA 2K27: 8.59%)
FC 26: 8.38%)
Onimusha: Way of the Sword: 6.81%)
Halloween: The Game: 5.46%)
The Blood of the Dawnwalker: 3.49%)
There’s a big chunk of mainstream here, with Fortnite, Roblox, NBA, GTA, FC all seeing plenty of MAU overlap. They’re a mainstream, casual, often family crowd – folks who have no bloody idea there’s discourse to be furious about, let alone a low Metacritic average.
There’s also the superhero faithful (Rivals at #2, Spidey at #3) and the buy-everything sickos (Onimusha, Halloween, and Dawnwalker all launched this month), so you’ve got the profile of a game that sells on brand and vibes, not on review scores.
An ever … yellow seller?
So yes, Wolverine has sold well, but its commercial long tail is limited by its mixed media and streamer reception. Unlike Spider-Man, which reviewed insanely well and has stayed evergreen for years, this one’s tail will be shorter and lumpier, but still there.
Wolverine will have secondary volume bumps driven by MCU X-Men marketing beats, holiday gifting, and new PS5 owners looking for high-budget graphics showcases (I’m looking at you, upgrading GTA 6 crowd).
But make no mistake, Wolverine will keep moving. The backlash was fast and hard, but that discourse will sail clean over the heads of the millions of more passive, mainstream players who make up the bulk of this audience. Those folks’ll buy Wolverine for the brand, get it for Christmas, and never once open Reddit to find out they were supposed to be angry.
So yeah, Wolverine will keep selling, just not at Spider-Man heights. Spidey’s been evergreen. Wolverine will be more ever-yellow. I’ll see myself out.
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That's just peanuts compared to games such as genshin that can earn that in random days. no wonder western triple a slop are failing and are not sustainable.