UPDATE 13/11/2024: Today Dragon Age: Veilguard has appeared at number 15 in the UK Most Played chart on Xbox, and number 16 in the US, which isn’t a bad position if it can hold onto it for a few weeks. It is curious that in the first week it was apparently not one of the top 50 most played games in either region, but perhaps the impact of Call of Duty had something to do with that.
TrueAchievements have now also published their updated top 40, with Dragon Age moving up to P24 from the previous week.
Original Article 11/11/2024: Whenever there’s a new release we’re always on tenterhooks waiting to find out how the latest game has performed and if it has met up to expectations. Dragon Age: Veilguard is the latest blockbuster release of 2024, and initial sales data looked promising (P4 in Xbox Top Paid chart). The game’s all-time peak on Steam still stands at 89,418 people (roughly what Metaphor: ReFantazio reached), not bad perhaps, considering a significant number of people could be playing it via EA. A more similar title: Dragon’s Dogma 2, however, had a peak of 228k.
But how about from a console perspective? Well it’s been over 7 days now since the game launched, which means we can reliably use the official Xbox Most Played data. And very surprisingly, Dragon Age isn’t showing in the top 50 in the UK. To put that in perspective, Star Wars Outlaws, which of course had a very rocky launch and struggled for sales, is still hanging around in the top 50 in P45 in the UK.
Looking at other data points, True Achievements had Dragon Age in P25 for the week ending November 3rd, which, given that was not even a full week on sale, would suggest better performance. But their data uses a subset of people signed up for the platform, rather than the entire console user base (so tends to skew in favour of more hardcore titles). We should expect to see their data for the first full week of sales in the next couple of days. The PlayStation equivalent (True Trophies), had Dragon Age at P40 for the same week.
Meanwhile, over at PS-Timetracker, which again looks at a subset of PlayStation users and their play time over 30 days, Dragon Age is #55, but it should be noted that’s using nowhere near a full month of data.
Overall then, it’s not looking great for the game so far. Of course, it hasn’t been without controversy, whether due to the usual anti-woke agenda of certain sections of the internet, or amid rumours of review score manipulation – but overall seemed to have landed really well critically. Was going up against Black Ops 6 boosted by a huge Game Pass audience just too much of an ask?
It might be that a lot of people have bought it but their time is divided at the moment between Call of Duty and Dragon Age, keeping it out of the chart. Either way, it will be interesting to see any changes once True Achievements & True Trophies are refreshed for the past week, and once the likes of Circana data is thrown into the mix.