SimCity sales pass 1.1 million in two weeks
18th Mar 2013 | 19:21
Despite a turbulent launch, SimCity managed to sell over 1.1 million copies in its first two weeks on sale.
This, says publisher EA, makes the new urban management sim "the biggest SimCity launch of all time".
In those two weeks, EA says developer Maxis has "increased server capacity by more than 400 per cent, optimized server response times by 40 times and deployed fixes to address players' direct feedback on game performance", as it tackled the connection issues which plagued its launch.
"Roughly" 54 per cent of those sales were made digitally, either via EA's own Origin service or other digital download outlets.
Since launch, players have racked up 15 million hours of play time and built more than 5.7 million cities containing over 780 million buildings, according to EA.
"SimCity had a great weekend with sales strong across both North America and Europe, adding to overwhelming demand at launch that has us tracking well beyond expectations for the game," said EA COO Peter Moore.
The publisher today revealed a choice of games it will be offering SimCity players for free as compensation for the recent server issues.
With the game's server issues mostly behind it EA has said its 'main focus' is now on improving Sim pathfinding with an upcoming patch.