Warner Bros. Games has announced that its Harry Potter action RPG "Hogwarts Legacy" has sold more than 22 million copies by the end of 2023, with about 2 million of those copies sold during the December festive period. David Haddad, president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, told Variety, "It's not just the number of units sold that I'm proud of, it's the fact that we've been able to bring the Hogwarts Legacy to the world."

Haddad is positively effusive in his praise for the game. He said, "It breathed new life into Harry Potter and allowed gamers to be themselves in this world, in this story. This position is usually occupied by the incumbent sequel game, and we are very proud to have made it to the top of that list."

The strange phrase "incumbent sequel games" refers to Call of Duty, GTA, Madden, NBA2K, etc.: the latest in a well-established series that has built a huge fan base over time. That said, The Hogwarts Legacy has been an extraordinary commercial success: even the critically acclaimed and top-selling "Elden's Ring" did not outsell that year's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2."

Warner Bros. shared a number of fun facts about the game, and Haddad emphasized that "many" players have played the game many times. They have played a total of 707 million hours, brewed 819 million potions, harvested 1.3 billion magical plants, rescued 593 million magical beasts, and defeated 4.9 billion dark wizards.

But the only number that really matters is these sales figures. Because Warner Bros. will be looking at Harry Potter with even more dollar eyes than before. Already Warner Bros. has announced the creation of a game based on the wizarding world sport of Quidditch (a kind of rugby played on brooms), which is currently in beta.

"We haven't announced specifically when or how Quidditch will hit the market," says Haddad.

Then, Haddad says, there is a "series of other things" in the pipeline that will allow players to "become part of this world and story and characters in a deeper and more profound way." Hogwarts Legacy 2 will almost certainly be released at some point after this show, but that is a long way off, and it would not be surprising if WB execs are currently running around giving the go-ahead for anything with the word "Potter" in it.

Haddad has more to say about the franchise and people's "content consumption," which has been the direction of WB Games for some time now, and yes, is driven by the idea of a live service offering. But one of the interesting things Haddad says is that "we will continue to offer live games along with new content ...... And about offering new content on a large scale." I'm not familiar with "massive launches," but perhaps he means something like a massive launch campaign; WB Games has previously said that there are no plans for DLC or expansions for "Hogwarts Legacy," given the sales figures (and the time it will take to develop a sequel), executives must be licking their chops at the possibility.

According to PCG's review, Hogwarts Legacy is "Harry Potter's Arkham Asylum moment" and the best video game the series has produced (admittedly, most of the previous entries were movie tie-ins, but still). Although there has been a great deal of online strife over whether or not to play the game due to its association with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, "Hogwarts Legacy" has been generally well received by critics and players alike, with a current Metacritic score of 84 and an average user score is 8.5.