There’s a new king in town, at least when it comes to the very specific metric of “fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game in PlayStation history in the first 24 hours.” Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has taken that particular crown, with publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment announcing Monday it sold more than 2.5 million copies of the Peter Parker/Miles Morales collab on its launch day, Oct. 20.
“On behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment, I want to say thank you to the fans — we truly hope you are enjoying your time playing as Peter and Miles in this amazing adventure,” said Eric Lempel, senior vice president of global marketing, sales, and business operations for Sony Interactive Entertainment, in a news release.
It’s hard to make exact comparisons, since game publishers only give sales figures when they want to brag about them, and they can come up with all kinds of asterisks and qualifiers to create opportunities for boasting. The asterisk in Monday’s news release about Spider-Man 2 notes that the total includes pre-ordered copies as well as those bundled with a PlayStation 5 console (both of which are standard for this kind of measurement).
Last year, Sony gave this same honor to God of War Ragnarök, but waited a couple of weeks to say the Norse adventure had racked up sales of 5.1 million copies within its first week on the market. (Perhaps Spider-Man 2, with its fast start, will end up eclipsing that mark by this Friday.) It’s unclear whether Ragnarök broke the record from the PlayStation 4 days, when Sony, in June 2020, touted sales of 4 million units during The Last of Us Part 2’s first three days of release, describing it as the “fastest-selling first-party PS4 exclusive ever.” And if you’re looking for even more qualifiers, the company said in July 2020 that Ghost of Tsushima’s three-day total of 2.4 million copies made it the fastest-selling “first-party original IP debut” in PS4 history.
If you’re one of the millions of PS5 owners who are playing Spider-Man 2 at the moment, you can check out our other coverage of the game, along with our beginner’s tips and other guides.