Hogwarts Legacy is already way more popular than Elden Ring

Hogwarts Legacy shares a lot of similarities with Elden Ring. A world filled with wonders and adversaries, magical spells, fantastical steeds, castles, giant lizards. The list goes on, but one key difference is the success that the games have seen in their comparative launch windows.

Last year, it was like you couldn't move for Elden Ring content. From the dark secret that the merchants are hiding, to the hilarious messages players were leaving for each other, to the builds that could cut through enemies like a pizza slicer through... pizza, to the mods that overhauled all of the combat encounters and even added Binley Mega Chippy to the Lands Between.

Today, that spot has been taken up by Hogwarts Legacy, though a lot of its attention has been buoyed by the response to the controversies that have hit it in the months before its release. With claims that the RPG is already a game of the year contender, it's worth spying the actual sales statistics to see if either Elden Ring or Hogwarts Legacy has the edge over the other.

Here's what Hogsmeade Village looks like in Hogwarts Legacy:

Gamesindustry.biz reported that GfK data for the United Kingdom's physical games sales shows that Hogwarts Legacy's first week sales are up 80% over Elden Ring's. It is also the biggest launch for a Harry Potter game in history with sales surpassing the previous record-holder - 2001's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - by a stunning 64%. Hogwarts Legacy's European digital sales are also 56% ahead of where Elden Ring's were this time last year, which makes Hogwarts Legacy the most successful non-Call of Duty or FIFA game since Red Dead Redemption 2.

While Elden Ring was and still is very successful for publisher Bandai Namco, Hogwarts Legacy trades on the appeal of the Harry Potter books and movies as well as the recent Fantastic Beasts series. Well, maybe not so much those ones.