Following its release on May 21st, both Microsoft and the game’s developer Ninja Theory have been silent regarding Senua’s Sage: Hellblade 2‘s sales performance. But now, we’re starting to get an idea of how it’s doing.
Circana analyst Matt Piscatella, who frequently tweets out interesting snippets of information, jumped onto X to address people asking about Hellblade 2’s performance in the May sales chart.
According to Piscatella, “Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II ranked 37th overall for May 2024 in US full game dollar sales (physical + digital for sharing pubs), while ranking 21st on Xbox Series.”
Getting a lot of questions on this one… Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II ranked 37th overall for May 2024 in US full game dollar sales (physical + digital for sharing pubs), while ranking 21st on Xbox Series.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) July 8, 2024
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There are, as always, a lot of factors to consider, such as Hellblade 2 being released toward the end of May, its inclusion on Game Pass and its lack of a physical edition. It’s also worth keeping in mind that Hellblade 2 retailed for just $50 which could make a big impact on its ranking in a sales chart based on money over total sales.
But Hellblade 2’s lacklustre numbers are best put into perspective when you consider what took the number one spot for May: Ghost of Tsushima. That’s right, a PC port of 2020 Sony title took the top spot for dollar sales, beating out the Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door remake. Keep in mind that Nintendo don’t report digital sales, however, so Paper Mario’s may have charted much higher.
That means a PC port of a 4-year-old PlayStation did better than a brand new Microsoft first-party release. Ghost of Tsushima was also priced at $50 on PC, just like Hellblade 2.
Obviously, Hellblade 2 is aimed at a much smaller audience and was likely built for less money, but it’s still staggering to see such a vast chasm between the two. For further comparison, Ghost of Tsushima managed to pull in 77,000 concurrent players on Steam when it released, whereas Hellblade 2 didn’t even manage to reach 4,000. In fact, Hellblade 2’s player count was even worse than Redfall which was considered a disaster.
Still, perhaps pure sales are not the best method of judging the success of Hellblade 2. One X user had the same thought and queried Piscatella on how well it did in terms of engagement on Xbox. Piscatella was ready with the data, stating that it ranked 12th for engagement, while Fallout 76 was 11th. He provided further details when replying to someone else, revealing that it beat out Star Wars: Jedi Survivor in 13th, Apex Legends in 14th and Forza Horizon 5 in 15th.
Overall, May was a relatively weak month for sales. One X user asked Mat Piscatella how May’s top game compared to previous May best-sellers across the years, to which Piscatella said “May 2024’s #1 game had the lowest sales for a May month leader since May 2013 (Injustice: Gods Among Us).”
On June 24, Christopher Dring of GameIndustry.biz posted the European sales charts and noted that overall sales were down by 17% over May of last year. However, he did point out that this is mostly due to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which sold more copies in May 2023 than the entire top ten of May 2024. At the time, people noted that Hellblade 2 was also absent from the top ten.
In a Tweet which described May as a “brutal month” Christopher Dring confirmed that not only did Hellblade 2 not appear in the top ten, it hadn’t even managed to crack the top 100. He also noted “Most Game Pass games make the Top 100,” when replying to a user who asked why Hellblade 2 would break the top 100 when it is available on a subscription.
US Full Dollar Sales chart for May 2024 (Physical + Digital)
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
- Helldivers II
- MLB: The Show 24
- Sea of Thieves
- Minecraft
- Elden Ring
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Stellar Blade
- Fallout 4
- EA Sports FC 24
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- Homeworld 3
- Mario Kart 8
- Madden NFL 24
- Rise of the Ronin
- F1 24
- Mortal Kombat 1
- Dragon’s Dogma II