Force Unleashed sells 1.5 million units in a week

by Alexander Sliwinski { Sep 23rd 2008 at 7:00PM }

Sure, many ~~Bothans~~ developers lost their ~~lives~~ jobs, but The Force Unleashed has gone on to sell 1.5 million units worldwide in less than a week, making it the fastest-selling Star Wars game of all time. The figures are based on the first five days of sales across all platforms the game is available on. LucasArts states it shipped more than 4.3 million copies of the game globally, but the demand now requires more units to be manufactured.

Although reviews of the game have been fairly mixed, strong initial sales seem to have been foretold by the game's record-setting demo downloads and, uh, book sales.

Tags: force-unleashed, lucasarts, star-wars, star-wars-force-unleashed, the-force-unleashed

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Shagittarius @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:04PM

Can we mark those 1.5 million purchasers for sterilization?

Ayrkain @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:11PM

Only if you do so with a lightsaber.

PsyClerk @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:17PM

Yeah, I hate it when people enjoy a game that I don't like.

colinbell @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:22PM

:) dont forget the 2 million odd who bought Kane and Lynch

brian @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:25PM

there's no need to sterilize someone who wouldn't
have sex anyways.

OOOOOO I WENT THERE

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:55PM

Oh shagg, always there with something funn... smar...
Well you say a lot of things

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:08PM

you cut me real deep there Brian, real deep

Cody @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:14PM

I sterilized your mom last night.

BananaBoat @ Sep 24th 2008 2:52AM

The game is terrible, but I guess some people liked it. If I were, I don't know, five years younger (probably more like 10 years younger) and I were still a rabid Star Wars fanboy (literally a boy) I probably would have LOVED the game. As it is though, it's a buggy piece of half-finished garbage. If people found enjoyment from said garbage, then I guess atleast some good came of it.

Then again, all 1.5 million of those purchasers may have hated the game too, so I don't know.

My brain is still reeling from my inability to get into the Little Big Planet beta earlier today. I could be playing Little Big Planet by this time tomorrow but...no....no....the internet saw fit to deny me access to the signup site until all the keys were gone. The rapidly F5'ing SOB's denied me Little Big joy. Bastards.

t_m @ Sep 24th 2008 6:38AM

i'm with you!

combine this with a fake big brother application process and we could sort the human race out in one go!

Snowblind @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:15PM

It's a great continuation of the story, too bad the gameplay doesn't really live up to expectations. But if you're a SW fan, it's definitely worth it for the story alone.

Anticrawl @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:46PM

I'm a big Star Wars fan and I couldn't justify spending 60+ on this game. The story is among the best in the Star Wars series (atleast out of the new trilogy) but the gameplay gets a bit tired after a while. Plus I'm still very bitter they cut multiplayer when I was hoping to have an Xbox Live enabled sort of Jedi Knights multiplayer and they innitially suggested that's how it would be before quietly cutting the multiplayer.

The voice actors/actors did a great job in the game though. I think it would have been a better idea to make the whole thing a cgi movie, cut out the gameplay and sell it for 20-30 bucks. I would have bought it for that, but I felt like after a while I was just playing it for the sake of seeing exactly how the story would unfold. Sure it isn't a good story, but has a Star Wars movie ever had a good script, that really isn't want draws people in I guess. I just think it would have been a better straight to dvd movie so long as all the same cast, director and writer was kept from the dev team at LucasArts and no one else was allowed to touch it.

Anticrawl @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:59PM

On a side note I picked it up as a rental on the 16th, still have it and play it a bit, beat it for both the dark and lightside endings. The game does not do a very good job of showing you what one must do to achieve the fight with vadar for the dark side ending. I had to revert the save and fight him again before I noticed he was off in the distance on the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Not sure how I was suppose to know to jump down there.

AK @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:13PM

"You know what they say, 'You don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.'"

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:06PM

you were supposed to look on the right side of your screen. Seriously, i cant believe you didnt realize that. It was very clearly divided on the screen, if you failed to see that there was the whole bright red glowing lightsaber

Anticrawl @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:13PM

I had assumed and hoped there was a deeper longer running chain of events that dictated the dark or light side endings, I wasn't looking for a simple obvious solution. Plus I was to busy looking at the purple lightening heh, I figured I would have the option to attack the weak Kota instead of the Emperor or I did something wrong to pass up the final fight with Vader.

Ignoring that the game was somewhat difficult, but generally for the wrong reasons, and not that it required a specific skill or ability to read enemies. Though the glitches aren't as bad as people are making them out to be, but I did find myself on two seperate occasions standing in a black void with smoke and lighting effects and no walls or floors. That and getting caught in a glitched section of the map is common if you are curious to test the limits of the maps like me, but I was able to get out of most thanks to exploding objects I could throw at myself.

MKA @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:20PM

The game sucks in so many ways.

But I am having a great time playing it.

TheAzureKnight @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:44PM

And that's all that matters my young apprentice...

j.howlett @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:21PM

unless it's on a sony console?

Invaderalex @ Sep 23rd 2008 9:01PM

Explain to me why TheAzureKnight comment is being voted down?
Last time I check I play games to entertain myself. Not to find faults and complain when anything doesn't reach your expectations and hating other people for their enjoyment.
Its not like they are killing your joy in some thing you like.

TheAzureKnight @ Sep 23rd 2008 9:50PM

It's cuz they can't handle the truth...

And some of these people happen to enjoy the koolaid that sony fanboys like tmac feed them about me.

tmacairjordan87 @ Sep 23rd 2008 10:50PM

Dumbasses tend to dig their own graves with their mouths. People certainly don't need my help to see how stupid you can be.

genius69 @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:29PM

How about we just castrate George Lucas with the lower mandible of a dead wookie.

KingOfGods @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:32PM

I love the game..I have no problem with the gameplay at all. Once you figure out that you don't have to aim objects just flick the stick in the general direction you want to throw.

Jabba @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:47PM

Meh, if the gameplay sucks, you might as well watch the story on youtube or something... Isn't that picture a bit of a spoiler?

marklar @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:49PM

i call shenanigans...

Zoot Suit Jedi @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:56PM

What are these...books..of which you speak? Are they from the before times, in the long, long ago?

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 7:57PM

I can't believe how many of you are saying this game sucks. Sure it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't that bad. Come on, if the small problems this game has means it's unplayable to you, why do you play games at all? N

KingOfGods @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:00PM

Half of them prob never played the game...They are just going off of the demo or what they read on the net

Dirty @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:06PM

I thought it was pretty solid. I rented it.

The sith armor you get for the darkside ending is sweet. Too bad I didn't want to bother playing through again with the new costume.

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:08PM

i liked that armor but it kinda ruined the plot for me. Not all on itself, but they made an evolutions action figure pack of the apprentice that had him in the basic outfit, the dantooine good side robes and the dark armor. As soon as I saw that i just thought "aw fuck now i know the plot"

AK @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:13PM

That's what a demo is supposed to do, prevent us from buying crappy games.

Chances are, if it's a shitty demo or you don't like it, the full version won't be much different.

tmacairjordan87 @ Sep 23rd 2008 10:53PM

Yeah I can't remember a game being good when I hated the demo for it. By the end of this game's demo I was bored to tears almost, doin the same damn 3 moves over and over...and over and fucking over again.

deaftly @ Sep 24th 2008 10:18AM

Whatever, this game fucking rules.

VelociRapido @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:06PM

I'm sure that $20 gift card at Toys R Us helped.

Ron @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:08PM

It's funny because this game was super hyped. One of my friends hyped this game to hell and now everytime I see her I ask what happened? Then she tells me to shut up, and I just grin.

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:14PM

that part would have been so much better without the damn tie fighters

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:15PM

fuck you comments.
Fuck you

Geist @ Sep 24th 2008 2:39AM

I don't know what you were responding to batman, but I don't think it could've been as funny as that.

Shmil (Mr ESC Liberation Front) @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:08PM

The story is great for star wars fan and the controls are fine. The character plays and moves exactly as I expected. What I didn't expect were some of the most annoying enemies i've ever played. The enemies that use melee attacks are just horrible to fight. They start their animation of their attack, swing once. You block the first attack and try to slash them with your lightsaber since you're right there. Normally you'd think this would stop them but no. Animation continues for the two additional attacks.

I don't mind the quicktime events, i just thought they weren't needed. I would've rather watched those as part of the cinematic.

But the worse part of the game has to be ****SPOILER********
bringing down the star destroyer. Seriously fuck that. If you've played that part I'm sure you can Agree
**********END SPOILER**************

Overall its worth a rental but I don't see myself playing through it again and again to unlock everything.

FOXHOUND @ Sep 24th 2008 9:21AM

****spoiler-iffic****

Yeah, that part single-handedly annoyed the eff out of me. Not just because it was buggy as all hell, but all kinds of weird shiz started happening during the fight -- the guardrails literally "slid" off screen, I got stuck on the back rail once, force lightning targeting is at its absolute worst in this part, the controls for using the Force to pull in the ship were godawful(I'm literally pulling the damn thing toward me, yet it's telling me to lift it right back up again), and let's face it... the fight was MUCH longer than it really needed to be. I really have to wonder how much QA went into this scene alone.

Then they went and trumped it all by the cheap-shot riddled attacks of the "Hangar of Death"(as IGN calls it)on the initial part of the Death Star level. Admittedly though, this game has some of the easiest boss patterns since the 16bit era.

The game as a whole isn't terrible - as everyone states, it's a great addition to the SW Universe(easily one of the best storylines prior to the early trilogy). However, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't paid full price for it.

LuckyEMS @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:08PM

I AM THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE USER EVAR AND DARK SIDE!!

but I only use push and lightning actually using a power that's actually dark side like force kill or drain (draining a body of its life force and channelling it into my own) would be too dark

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:11PM

there is no force drain. At least not normally, the only way that happens is the health drain powerup, which is not a power

LuckyEMS @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:13PM

in star wars canon there is force drain and even a power that kills people by looking at them

but we didn't want Marek actually being a dark side user to stop him from his redemption at the end

theturtle363 @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:15PM

there's also a power that lets force users rip wormholes into space, but that wasn't in the game, so who cares?

Anticrawl @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:17PM

The lack of varying force powers was a bit upsetting, but thankfully one of my favorites in the Star Wars universe has always been the Force Push, so versitle, which is why I use gust in Shadowrun for everything. I was upset you couldn't use force push against solid objects like walls or floors to rapidly change your direction or launch yourself high into the air.

LuckyEMS @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:22PM

that is my only complaint, not the lack of general powers but the lack of dark side powers and push isnt even dark its fucking generic and then combine it with your butterknife saber probably makes Marek the worst Jedi/Sith ever

jimmygotsmack @ Sep 23rd 2008 9:34PM

Like about half the powers that where in Jedi Knight Series, especially mysteries of the sith, or kotor. Force destruction? Where was my ball of pure energy that vaporized anyone it touched, and would do massive push to everyone in the area, sending them flying?

j.howlett @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:19PM

the demo grew on me. i will likely get the game at a lower price.

Miles @ Sep 23rd 2008 8:35PM

This is the way to go. Its really fun, but grows old in the two or three days it'll take to beat it. Without spoiling anything, the story is a good addendum to the Star Wars universe. Wait till January when all the trade ins will come in , and pick it up for 30 or less.

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