Hogwarts Legacy has officially cleared Zelda as 2023’s best-selling game worldwide

Hogwarts Legacy was officially 2023’s biggest game, beating out The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Following the release of Nintendo‘s financial results, we now know that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold 20.28 million copies in its first year, including digital sales, whereas sales of Hogwarts Legacy topped 22 million, according to Warner Brothers.

According to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment president David Haddad, this made Hogwarts Legacy “the best-selling game of the year in the entire industry worldwide.”

While it was already confirmed by research firm Circana in January that Hogwarts had taken the top spot in the US, and Zelda had come in fifth, due to Nintendo not releasing digital sales of its games outside of its financial results, it was speculated that it could have potentially overtaken Hogwarts Legacy in sales worldwide, when factoring both physical and digital.

It’s worth noting that Hogwarts Legacy was released in February, whereas Tears of the Kingdom was released three months later in May, and exclusively on Nintendo Switch.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s first-year performance means it cracks the top ten for all Nintendo Switch software sales.

Hogwarts Legacy consistently topped the charts around the world during 2023. This was also helped by the game’s staggered release, which saw it released first on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC, and then later on last generation consoles and Nintendo Switch.

Warner plans to follow up on its success with Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, which was revealed last April, and “a series of other things” that are currently unannounced and “will let the fans be part of this world and stories and characters in deeper and deeper ways”, Haddad said.