In news that is likely to be about as shocking as discovering Donald Trump is an unpleasant person, EA’s Star Wars Battlefront has been doing big box office in the shadow of the juggernaut that is The Force Awakens, with a whopping 12 million copies sold in just two months.
It’s estimated that, after selling around 6 million copies in its launch month, Battlefront went on to sell that again amid the hype and success of the recently released seventh entry in the Star Wars films; The Force Awakens.
The only surprise about this story is how downbeat initial sales figures sounded after Gamestop executive Tony Bartel claimed that the game had sold poorly at launch, a claim EA’s COO Peter Moore later rejected as he projected around 13 million copies sold by the end of the fiscal year.
According to celebrity guesser Michael Pachter, who spoke to Fortune, the game is likely to have made in excess of $650 million already, which is just a shade off the US box office figures for The Force Awakens ($686.4 million as of Friday). Along with games like Disney Infinity, which was also Star Wars heavy, Star Wars games made over $1 billion in recent months.
When the game was released back in November, it could only manage to be the third best-selling game of the month as the twin behemoths of Fallout 4 and Black Ops III outstripped DICE’s shooter, which received mixed, but generally favourable, reviews. Clearly, the Star Wars bandwagon has given it a longer shelf life than expected.