I just saw on 2K's official site (https://store.2k.com/en/civilization) that "Sid Meier's Civilization is one of the most influential and successful strategy franchises in video game history, having sold more than 51 million units worldwide." While on Feb. 28th, 2016 (Civ 6 was published in Oct. 2016), the sales figure of civ franchise was 33 million, with 8 million belonging to civ 5. Source: https://venturebeat.com/2016/02/18/...sions-33m-copies-sold-1-billion-hours-played/. Apparently, 18 million more copies were sold during this time. Some of them definitely belong to civ 5. What's the share of civ 6 sales? 10 million?
Always a chance in the last 4 years they have changed their calculations. And I don't know how they count expansions and DLC - for example, if civ 6 has sold 8M copies, and R+F has sold 6M, does that count as 14M combined? Steamdb has civ 6 anywhere from about 2-10M copies sold. Although that presumably only counts steam sales, so consoles would fall under a different bucket.
Already on 2019 Civ 6 was declared the most copies sold game in the series, so it has definately surpassed the previous titles.
I think a big part of it is just availability. Civ 4 was ported to Windows and OS X. Civ 5 was Windows, OS X and Linux. Civ 6 is Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PS4, and Android. Adding all the consoles as well as mobile significantly increases the potential player base. PC gaming is a much more niche market.
That's a good point. IMO, small DLCs are not counted. If they were counted in, considering the numerous DLCs civ5/6 released, the sale numbers should be rocket high (i.e. buy a civ 6 platinum = 1 base game + 6 DLCs + 2 expansions; same for the civ 5 complete). Is it possible that expansions were counted? Possible, but not that likely. First, they are literally still DLCs (which requires the base game to launch). Second, for a season pass like NFP, how should they do the math? One person may choose to buy 5 out of the 6 DLCs in the NFP pass. Will this be considered 1 sales unit or not?
