Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero sells 3 million copies as a huge commercial success

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is a major commercial success. The game based on a famous anime franchise has sold over 3 million copies becoming the most-played game on Steam in a very short time. 

The game also achieved high numbers in the early access period. According to SteamDB, the game peaked at 91,005 players before its official release.

Currently, SteamDB shows that the all-time peak was at 122,554 players on Friday, October 11. While in the last 24 hours, the peak reached 83,313 players. At the time of this writing, the game maintains an active stream of players, as 50,296 players are playing the game right now.

The game has outperformed all previous Dragon Ball Z games, doubling the numbers for the franchise, including other titles of the same genre like Tekken 8, Mortal Kombat 1 (with highest of 38,129 players), and Street Fighter 6 ( which peaked at 70,573 players).

However, the data count of the console players has not yet been revealed by Sony or Microsoft. But Steam’s number indicates that the game is performing better than expectations.

Steam DB shows the all-time peak of Dragon Ball: Sparking zero

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero ranks no. 2 in top sellers on Steam

Steam’s weekly top-seller global chart has listed the latest Dragon Ball Z game at the second spot under Counter Strike 2.

Sparking Zero is the first in the Budokai Tenkaichi series with the former installments selling millions of copies. However, it is hard to compare the total number of worldwide sales to the new games since there is not enough data.

On the other hand, Sparking Zero could be the fastest-selling one in the franchise when compared to the initial numbers of other titles of the same fighting genre.

Dragon Ball Fighter Z sold 2 million copies in its first week with over 10 million lifetime sales according to May 2023. Dragon Ball Xenoverse sold 1.5 million copies in its first month, also selling over 10 million copies in its lifetime. The Xenoverse 2 sold 1.4 copies in the first week. Lastly, Dragon Ball Kakarot met the number of 1.5 million as well in week 1. None of these titles could come near the number of Sparking Zero 24-hour count, in a month let alone a week.

What does it mean for Bandai Namco?

In 2023, the Dragon Ball IP generated 942.5 million combining the sales of video games, merchandise, and other products combined. Although this wasn’t a bad number, the franchise saw a decrease of 2.7% as compared to the previous year.

Meanwhile Gundam franchise brought in 976.7 million, although not much different from Dragon Ball but it showed an increase of 11% as compared to the previous year.

When compared to last year, Bandai Namco has published multiple top-selling games in 2024 such as Tekken 8 (selling 2 million copies in a month) and Elden Ring: Shadow which made a record of selling 5 million copies in just 3 days.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero could make a new record for Bandai as the year ends.

Recently Bandai Namco also canceled some of its titles , while also laying off the staff.  The company may be making these decisions to keep the tempo of successful releases for the next year as well.