Apparently, the Sims franchise just recently sold its 100 millionth unit. This milestone suggests some interesting math. The original Sims was released on Feb 4, 2000 – 2,994 days ago – which means that Sims products have sold an average of 33,400 copies a day for over eight years!
As a matter of perspective, Stardock’s Brad Wardell recently stated that selling 100,000 units was a good threshold for success in the PC market, which means that the Sims franchise sold the equivalent of a hit PC game every 72 hours…
Wow.
Edit: Apparently, I fail at the maths.
Wow, nice maths, the number doesn’t seem “too big” when you first think of it (well, hell, that’s not even the population of America, or Europe!) but when you put it like that, there’s a lot of sales.
It’ll be interesting to see if the next instalment keeps it up, and I’ve never seen a sales graph for the series – do the constant “packs” really sell that well, or is it the core game which makes up the bulk of the sales, with many people using free online content to complement it?
A corrolary to Andrew’s point…
It says a lot about the open-endedness of smart object model of designing AI, animations and behaviors. You can crank out expansion paks like crazy with comparatively little investment.
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MobyGames lists roughly 50 games in the Sims franchise, give or take a few for various platform-specific editions and compliations.
Your maths are off by a year.
Feb 4, 2000 was 2994 days ago (relative to April 16), which means the Sims “only” sold about 33,400 copies a day for over 8 years (depending on when exactly that 100 millionth unit was sold), and the equivalent of a hit PC game every 72 hours.
Of course, that doesn’t really change the “Wow.”