| Mail |

You might also like: WoW Insider, Joystiq, and more

More Sites You Might Like

Aion reports nearly 1 million copies sold in North America and Europe

by Rubi Bayer on Nov 9th 2009 6:00PM

Aion hit the ground running earlier this year, easily breaking the 400,000 mark for pre-orders, and they're continuing the trend. The first month post launch was occasionally rocky, but the good seems to easily outweigh the bad in the eyes of fans: NCsoft announced today that they have sold nearly one million copies of Aion: The Tower of Eternity in North America and Europe.

North America accounted for over 500,000 of those copies, and European sales stand at around 470,000, allowing Aion to make up an extremely respectable 52 percent of NCsoft's total sales last quarter.

Aion has their player base to thank for the sales, but their timing certainly didn't hurt. They enjoyed a launch time relatively free of competition -- the MMO market wasn't exactly glutted with new high-fantasy PvPvE titles in 2009.

Aion officially launched September 22nd in North America, and September 25th in Europe.

Source

Tags: aion, aion-online, ncsoft, sales

Reader Comments (39)

It is such a great game. I really love it, it does need more content, but it has a lot of instances (really cool ones) and quests with "cutscenes). I felt playing an old style RPG on many campaigns.

However, its terrible customer support and bots everywhere is awfull.
You see people in major town with Kinah (gold) selling adds everywhere, for days. Same bots at same areas. But I'm not talking about 1, I'm talking about dozens of them.

THAT, not lack of content, may ruin this game.

It's hilarious irony that this bit of news is popping up right after the article about Warhammer laying off 80 or so folks barely half a year after they bragged about selling a million boxes.

Interesting, with the presales from Hype alone (and probably people wanting in on the beta) topping 400,000 copies in North America they could only get another 100,000 on top?

Sales of 100,000 isn't that great a think to crow over.

I too will wait to see how this game is faring 3 months down the track.

I want to see how they are doing 6 months from now before we get too excited.

Almost 1 million are ripoff and I am one of them :(

After 4 tries at this (lotro, aoc, war, now Aion), I'm hoping the greater mmo community will get a collective clue and stop believing the hype of these new games.

Oh I know... we can blame Massively for not getting in there fast enough to tell us not to buy the game. ;)

Anyhow, rest assured you aren't the only one with regrets....

@scarr

I think I learned my lesson (an expensive one no less). Never buy a game until they have a trial account setup.

Yes I agree wait till the game is out in stores... Do not take the game on a level cap beta like anything above the level cap of the beta will suck... Case: Age of Conan/Aion

I would dearly love to know how many of those 1 million were bought for the purposes of botting and gold farming.

I pre-ordered the game - didn't make it past a week of play, and kinda wish Steam had a return policy.

Problem with the game? Its boring as sod, and horrible horrible horrible horrible customer service.

Its only redeeming factor is it has pretty graphics.

1 million sold is an impressive sales number but it's not the number that will signify a "success" in most people's eyes. They need to retain a good chunk of those sold boxes as paying subscriptions...IMO 250,000+ would be an overwhelming success while everything over 100,000 that pays the game's bills would make it a good run.

Myself, I follow the Van Hemlock 3 month rule. I never run into the massive opening day headaches, I save hundreds of dollars on eggs that end up being really horrible games, I don't hit the massive updater/patcher problems, no server queues and when (and if) I end up getting in the game the unforseen gamebreaking issues are usually ironed out. It all makes for a much more enjoyable experience.

Great advice but honestly we're all horribly addicted to MMO jumping so see you in SoM =)

I bought Aion despite not really being motivated to play closed beta. Just too much on rails and short on ohh ahh moments for me to keep my sub.

The 400K pre-order going to 500K overall sales is actually pretty scary in that ouch the hype died fast kind of way.

Problem for Aion is unlike AoC, they won't be able to fix it because it is working as intended crysys.dll errors excluded. Six months or a year won't change it into an open world, though it might add swimming so that when I plummet out of the sky over water... I don't run on the ground and drown ;)

I know I am in the minority here, but I actually like the game.

I am an ex-EQ player, so I am used to the grind and actually prefer that game style over questing.

Don't forget this is only the western world tho. When we are going to decide if the game is a success, will we count only the western subscribers or the ones in Korea too? Since with those, they will easily get more then 1mil.

Getting 1 million isn't surpring. KEEPING 1 million would be more impressive.

Like many others I bought this game just to check it out but its not my cup of tea. Too grindy for my tastes so I won't be subscribing.

When half or 2/3 of that 1 million are spammers/farmers and half the rest only played the free month without re-subbing, that figure means nothing

It is a sad state of affairs when a game like that actually makes it to the top. Personally, I would have rather had WAR, AoC, and even Vanguard get to the top tiers within gaming rather than Aion. Not a huge fan of Anime style MMOs and there seems to be an influx of them lately.

Yeah like Aion and...uh...

Aion?

I agree with your comment, but not for the same reasons, I don't believe.

When you said, "game[s] like that," I believe you meant games with anime-styled graphics, of which there is only one notable one on the American market, and that is Aion. Even if there were more, so what, it's only a graphical style.

When I read, "game[s] like that," however, I thought to myself, "Shoddy attempts at localizing a grindy Eastern MMO that STILL feature far too much grind and rely too much on pretty graphics and not enough on solid gameplay." In the case of the latter, however, I concur, it -is- a sad state of affairs when a "game like that," makes it to the top.

But as many others has said, it may be up there in sales, but what goes up, must come down, and I foresee Aion plummeting very rapidly.

Previous 20 Comments

Aion reports nearly 1 million copies sold in North America and Europe

Reader Comments (39)

Posted: Nov 9th 2009 9:33PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 9th 2009 9:52PM wjowski said

Posted: Nov 9th 2009 10:18PM Joystiq Login Bugs SUCK said

Posted: Nov 9th 2009 10:32PM Its Utakata stupid said

Posted: Nov 9th 2009 10:46PM TheJackman said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 12:47AM Laren said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 1:27AM Angelworks said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 8:07AM TheJackman said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 12:12AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 1:25AM Angelworks said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 5:35AM Drexel said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 7:50AM Daelen said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 9:50AM Xailia said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 10:50AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 11:18AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 11:32AM Suspiro said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 12:26PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 3:53PM wjowski said

Posted: Nov 10th 2009 11:06PM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

The Secret World launch delayed to July 3rd

Featured Stories

The Daily Grind: Do you stay loyal to your MMO guild?

Betawatch: May 19 - 25, 2012

Some Assembly Required: City of Heroes' Mission Architect

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW