SimCity sales reach 1.1m copies, breaks Origin records

EA’s controversial city-simulator SimCity has passed the 1m unit sales mark.

The publisher has announced that the game, which was released in the UK on March 8th, has to date shifted 1.1m copies. The game also broke Origin records, helping the service to 1.3m concurrent users.

Furthermore, 54 per cent of those sales were made digitally leaving physical with just a 44 per cent share.

To date SimCity players have logged over 15m hours of gameplay, creating over 5.7m original cities and constructing 780m buildings. Enough road and rail lines have been built to circle the globe over 40,000 times.

It would of course be remiss not to mention the terrible problems that have blighted the game so far. It all began with the launch day server woes but has since blossomed into direct challenges about the game’s very core and design.

Since then, however, Maxis has boosted server capacity by over 400 per cent and improved server response times by a factor of 40. It has also promised to patch some of the AI issues.

EA last night confirmed that it will be offering a free game to all those who register their copy of SimCity before March 26th.

SimCity had a great weekend with sales strong across both North America and Europe, adding to overwhelming demand at launch that has us tracking well beyond expectations for the game,” EA COO Peter Moore stated.

SimCity is one of the storied brands in gaming, and Maxis delivered a game re-envisioned and engineered for the online age.”