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sales

Best Early Labor Day Mattress Sales (2025)

by admin August 26, 2025

The best Labor Day mattress sales are here, and if you’ve been looking for a sign from the universe to upgrade your bed, consider this it. I’ve been a professional mattress tester for five years, so I’m plugged in to what’s going on in the mattress world (we’re constantly scoping out new additions to our best mattresses list) and can keep track of the sales that really are the ones to watch … and which ones you can skip until Cyber Monday.

While white pants are about to be out of season (if you follow that tradition), crisp white sheets are all-season, baby. We’ll have updates on those sales as well in the weeks ahead, so you can get the best bedsheets to go with your new mattress.

Updated August 25, 2025: As we get closer to Labor Day weekend, we’ve added increased discounts from Nolah and Bear, as well as sheets sales from The Company Store and Bedsure.

WIRED Featured Deals

The Best Labor Day Mattress Sales

We’re still a few days out from the holiday weekend, but the early Labor Day mattress sales just come sooner and sooner each year. Not that we’re complaining, and I don’t think you are either! We track prices to see where the actual deals are, not just tweaked sales lingo.

Helix

It’s always a good sign when you start your Labor Day mattress deals list off strong. Not only because the deal itself is good, but also because this particular mattress is the best one we’ve tested so far. The Helix Midnight Luxe is a side sleeper’s dream, mainly because it was made especially for that purpose. That’s the whole premise of Helix, where every sleeping position and body type can find a mattress that serves it. For Labor Day, there’s an especially good deal going. Promotions usually are 20 percent off, but surprise! Use our code WIRED27 for 27 percent off this holiday weekend.

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August 26, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Intel warns shareholders that the US government’s 10% stake could hurt company’s international sales

by admin August 25, 2025

The U.S. government’s acquisition of a 10% stake in Intel highlights strategic importance of the company and indicates how important it is to the U.S. government. But the government’s new 10% ownership stake could cause problems for shareholders, employees, business partners, and the company’s international sales, according to Intel’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

One of Intel’s biggest concerns is its dependence on foreign markets: In fiscal 2024, the company earned 76% of its $53.1 billion revenue outside the United States, a slight decline from the previous year, but still the lion’s share. Sales to entities in China contributed 29% of Intel’s total revenue, followed by the U.S. with 24.5%, Singapore with 19.2%, and Taiwan with 14.7%. Now that the U.S. government is Intel’s largest shareholder, the chipmaker is directly linked to Trump’s unpredictable trade and tariff policies, which could unsettle overseas customers and governments.

“Having the U.S. Government as a significant stockholder of the Company could subject the Company to additional regulations, obligations or restrictions, such as foreign subsidy laws or otherwise, in other countries,” a statement by Intel reads.

NFT sales drop 25% to $134m, CryptoPunks plunge 59%

by admin August 24, 2025

The NFT market has experienced a sharp correction with sales volume dropping by 25.78% to $134 million. This reversal follows the previous week’s recovery.

Summary

NFT sales fall 25% to $134M, but buyers and sellers both rise over 25%
Polygon and BNB post strong gains while Ethereum sales drop 41%
Courtyard leads collections with $14.7M sales, CryptoPunks plunge 59%

As per CryptoSlam data, despite the sales decline, market participation has continued to expand. NFT buyers have grown by 25.74% to 450,096, and NFT sellers have risen by 25.91% to 321,107. NFT transactions have increased by 6.26% to 1,652,284.

The market situation is also volatile as the Bitcoin (BTC) price has dropped to the $115,000 level. At the same time, Ethereum (ETH) has risen to $4,700. The global crypto market cap is now $3.98 trillion, up from last week’s market cap.

Ethereum maintains lead in sales

Ethereum has maintained its leading position with $60.7 million in sales, though declining 41.63% from the previous week. Ethereum’s wash trading has fallen by 55.47% to $13.5 million.

BNB (BNB) Chain has held second place with $20.6 million, rising 10.63%. Polygon (POL) has climbed back to third position with $16.1 million, surging 37.86%.

Source: Blockchains by NFT Sales Volume (CryptoSlam)

Mythos Chain remains in fourth with $9.7 million, up 3.17%. Solana (SOL) sits in fifth with $7.5 million and dropped 13.63%.

Immutable (IMX) holds sixth place with $7.2 million, down 10.70%. Cardano (ADA) has entered the top seven with $3.1 million, jumping 48.96%.

NFT buyer count jumps

The buyer count has increased across most blockchains, with Cardano leading at 91.41% growth, followed by BNB Chain at 84.48% and Immutable at 72.18%.

Courtyard on Polygon has reclaimed the top spot in collection rankings with $14.7 million in sales, surging 41.01%. The collection has seen growth in buyers (186.96%) and transactions (45.28%).

SpinNFTBox on BNB Chain holds second place with $10.9 million, rising 39.83%. The collection continues to be dominated by a single seller despite having 1,424 buyers.

CryptoPunks has fallen to third place with $8.7 million, plunging 59.28%. The collection has seen decreases across all metrics, including transactions (56.98%), buyers (52.78%), and sellers (30.23%).

Moonbirds sits in fourth with $7.4 million, up 29.94%. DMarket holds fifth place with $4.6 million, rising 8.70%. Guild of Guardians Heroes rounds out the top six with $4.2 million, growing 18.72%.

Notable high-value sales from this week include:

CryptoPunks #1082 sold for 80 ETH ($350,969)
CryptoPunks #2596 sold for 72.99 ETH ($315,628)
CryptoPunks #5477 sold for 66 ETH ($285,187)
CryptoPunks #3704 sold for 63 ETH ($271,922)
CryptoPunks #8864 sold for 56.5 ETH ($269,994)

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August 24, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

No, Silksong hasn’t been in development hell, hype skyrocketed sales of the original game to give Team Cherry financial freedom

by admin August 21, 2025

Earlier today, Team Cherry finally announced a release date for its long-awaited Hollow Knight sequel Silksong. After seven years, it will finally be out next month.

Yet contrary to what you may believe, Silksong hasn’t been in development hell for that time. Instead, Team Cherry’s developers were just having too much fun making it.

In fact, sales of the original game have skyrocketed from 2.8m copies to 15m copies since Silksong’s announcement in 2019, giving the studio the financial freedom to take their time.

Hollow Knight: Silksong – Special AnnouncementWatch on YouTube

What was originally intended as an expansion to Hollow Knight soon ballooned into its own game, with the studio announcing in February 2019 it would be a full sequel.

“Even at that point we were recognising that it was going to become another giant thing to rival the scale of Hollow Knight or probably exceed it,” Team Cherry co-founder Ari Gibson told Bloomberg. “And then because of how we work, obviously the world ended up being just as big or bigger. And the quest system existed. And the multiple towns existed. Suddenly you end up six, seven years later.”

“It was never stuck or anything,” Gibson added. “It was always progressing. It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it.”

That 12m rise in sales of the original Hollow Knight is extraordinary. Somehow, Team Cherry inadvertently created the ultimate hype machine: hype for the sequel led to sales for the original, which meant it could take longer to develop, which fed the hype even more due to silence, which became a meme, which meant it could take even longer.

“We’re very lucky in that regard,” said Gibson. “I don’t ever really think about it that much. Maybe that’s the privilege of it.”

No strict deadline and a flood of financial income meant Team Cherry could take its time. It’s in stark contrast to so many other studios at the moment hell-bent on chasing trends and generating cash in the face of rising development costs, which has inevitably resulted in the mass layoffs across the industry in the last couple of years.

By contrast, Team Cherry has remained lean. What’s more, it’s spent the past seven years enjoying development.

“We’ve been having fun,” said Gibson said. “This whole thing is just a vehicle for our creativity anyway. It’s nice to make fun things.

“We’re very fortunate that we have a development method that is so enjoyable,” Gibson continued. “Not exactly sure how we stumbled into that. Everything comes together quickly. You can see results fast. Ideas turn into something that exist in the game almost immediately before your eyes, and that’s very satisfying. And that allows you to go off on those tangents and meet weird characters because someone’s off-handedly mentioned a weird character as an idea and the other person’s laughed, and that’s enough.”

Will Silksong push the Metroidvania genre to new heights? | Image credit: Team Cherry

“You’re always working on a new idea, new item, new area, new boss,” added co-founder William Pellen. “That stuff’s so nice. It’s for the sake of just completing the game that we’re stopping. We could have kept going.”

Add to that a desire for exceptional polish, and it’s easy to see how development could have continued even longer.

“I think we’re always underestimating the amount of time and effort it’ll take us to achieve things,” said Gibson. “It’s also that problem where, because we’re having fun doing it, it’s not like, ‘It’s taking longer, this is awful, we really need to get past this phase.’ It’s, ‘This is a very enjoyable space to be in. Let’s perpetuate this with some new ideas.'”

“There’s a level of finish that has to be met throughout the entire game,” added Pellen. “All the way the systems interact, all the hidden work that pops up later on. It’s multiplicative. As you add stuff, the process of tying it all back together just increases.”

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Silksong will fully live up to the hype, but with its release date of 4th September it won’t be long until we find out. At the least, it follows games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a project with a relatively small team and a huge amount of passion finding big success, where so many AAA studios and publishers have stumbled.

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August 21, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

21 Best Early Labor Day Sales on WIRED-Tested Gear (2025)

by admin August 21, 2025

Labor Day is not until September 1, but retailers are already offering oodles of Labor Day deals. The unofficial end of summer, a celebration of the American worker’s contribution to our national prosperity, brings with it bargains on WIRED-tested gear, including home office essentials and some of our favorite gadgets. For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be cruising and perusing for the latest true discounts on the gear we recommend to our friends—and rounding them all up for you below.

Check our Best Labor Day Mattress Deals and upcoming outdoor gear deals stories for additional savings. We’ve also got some updated roundups for Back to School Deals and Back to School Laptop Deals.

Featured Labor Day Deals

Tech Deals

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

The Sony Bravia 7 II has been on sale for this price for a little while, but we have yet to see it drop lower. It’s in our Best TVs buying guide as the pick with the most immersive picture. It has natural yet vivid colors and excellent picture processing. Reviewer Ryan Waniata says it renders 4K and HD scenes “so clearly you’ll feel like they’re going to spill into your living room.” It could have better black levels and a few more ports, but it’s still an excellent set, especially at this price.

Our favorite electric scooter, the Apollo Go manages to strike an excellent balance between features and price. It weighs 46 pounds and has maximum speeds of 28 miles per hour, though you can tweak top speed, brake strength, and acceleration response in the app. It also has a few extra features like turn signals, a bell, and self-healing tires. We haven’t seen it sell for less.

This is the best price we’ve seen thus far for our favorite Android tablet. It’s not a high-performance powerhouse, but it can handle the tasks that most people need. You can watch videos (even outdoors in bright sunlight), play most games, and use the included stylus to take notes or efficiently browse the web. The battery lasts about 20 hours and only takes about 100 minutes to recharge.

Courtesy of Apple

The Apple iPad (A16, 2025) is the iPad we recommend for most people. It comes in fun colors like blue and yellow, and it’s plenty powerful to handle whatever you’ll throw at it on a day-to-day basis—from playing games to streaming videos to browsing the web. It doesn’t support Apple Intelligence, which may be a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. It does have a modern bezel design around its 11-inch LCD screen, plus USB-C charging, a Touch ID sensor, and two 12-megapixel cameras—one in the back and one for selfies. It also works with many of the best iPad accessories.

The M4 Apple MacBook Air is the best MacBook for most people. This is the cheapest we’ve seen it. Where some MacBooks are overkill for basic everyday tasks, this lightweight model can handle them with ease—and you won’t be paying for performance that you won’t use. It has a bright display, long battery life, and support for up to two external displays as well as Apple Intelligence. And while you might want something else if you’ll be doing heavy video editing or need a giant screen, the M4 MacBook Air will be capable of handling multiple Google Chrome tabs and apps running in the background. We do wish it had some more ports, but you can always use a USB hub to customize them further.

These are the best noise-canceling earbuds we’ve tried. They have excellent sound quality and battery life, plus solid control options, and they’re comfortable to wear for long periods of time. But where they truly excel is in active noise canceling. They can make a busy subway car or crowded airplane disappear entirely, lending you extra focus or decompression with no effort.

Home and Outdoor Deals

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Branch has made our favorite office chair for years. It has oodles of adjustable elements, including the arms, armrests, seat depth, recline, lumbar support, and seat tilt. The foam cushion seat is comfortable and the mesh backrest is supportive, too. The affordable price tag is icing on the cake, and while it doesn’t go on sale very often, you can save ten percent until the sale ends with code LABORDAY.

If you don’t want to spring for the Ergonomic Chair Pro, this is the best budget-friendly office chair and an option worth considering. It’s very easy to assemble and there are a few adjustable areas for a better fit—the armrests, seat, recline, and lumbar support can all be dialed in. There are some fun fabric color options, like blue and orange, though the upholstery does tend to pill and is a magnet for pet hair. Even with its quirks, it will be a definite upgrade if you’re still working from the ratty chair you picked up off Craigslist when you first built your home office.

Sitting all day is bad for you! This telescoping desk can be raised up as high as 45 inches, with simple setup and two available sizes. It comes in a few different finishes. The leg motors aren’t the quietest, but they work well, and the desk looks great in any setup. For additional recommendations, check our home office buying guide.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

This coupon code gets you 20 percent off almost everything on Humanscale’s website. Humanscale makes some of the best office chairs. The Freedom Headrest is the best reclining office chair, and it drops from $1,743 to $1,394 with code SEMIANNUAL20. Editor Julian Chokkattu said, “this chair gracefully supports my back like a mother gently laying a baby in a crib.” We also like the Humanscale Path, which is great for tight spaces and even comes in armless versions. It falls from $1,294 to $1,035 after code.

The Silk & Snow S&S Organic Mattress is our favorite organic latex mattress. The latex-wrapped coils help to alleviate any tension or pressure points while you’re sleeping, and it’s especially great for side sleepers. Check our roundup of Labor Day Mattress Deals for additional expert recommendations.

This is the bed frame I’m currently using, and I love it very much. Assembly wasn’t my favorite, but once I got it all put together, I fell in love. It has a drawer at the foot of the bed that’s handy for storing extra linens or off-season clothing, and it’s sturdy too. I also appreciate that the platform lets me maneuver my mattress easily so I don’t have to fight to change my sheets.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

This well-made, luxurious sofa is one of the best couches you can buy online. Operations Manager Scott Gilbertson called it the best-looking and most comfortable couch he’s ever sat on. The website lets you order swatches and pick the layout you want, and you can even get a full-size printout to make sure the couch will look right in your living space. There are dozens of options for upholstery, legs, and cushion fill, so you can create the couch of your dreams. For a more affordable option, we also like the Benchmade Modern Laguna (pictured above) on sale for $2,397 ($599 off). “My family and I have been sitting on it for a year and a half now, and the single cushion (as well as the rest of the couch’s cushions) is comfortable and supportive,” says reviewer Nena Farrell.

Breeo makes the best upgrade fire pit. The American-made pit has a fire bowl that’s two feet wide, so it’ll fit pre-cut wood, and there are a ton of accessories available. (We especially like the live-fire pizza oven, on sale for $723—a $128 discount). The hefty, sturdy base and natural patina (on the Corten steel option) make this a centerpiece worthy of any backyard.

This is featured in our guide to the Best Kitchen Composters. It has the fastest compost breakdown of any model we tried. It has some quirks, like a lid that requires two hands to open and the machine’s tendency to make a loud whirring noise as it works. But it’s a great-entry level kitchen composter, and it doesn’t drop in price very often.

Courtesy of Ooni

The Ooni Volt is the very best electric pizza oven. It can heat up to 850 degrees Fahrenheit, and the triple-pane glass door always lets you see what’s going on. And while you might miss out on some of the vibes that come with a fire-powered oven, the Volt can safely be used indoors and outdoors—so you won’t have to brave the coming winter chill (or supply propane refills) to get your paws on some good ‘za.

Hydroviv makes one of the best shower water filters we’ve tested. The bacteriostatic showerhead was able to filter total chlorine down to undetectable levels in reviewer Matthew Korfhage’s chloramine-treated water system. This deal is for the automatically-replenishing subscription bundle. Hydroviv says you should replace filters every six months, but you can pause or cancel that subscription if you decide you want to order them separately.

WIRED Reviews Editor Julian Chokkattu tested and loved this outdoor couch and armchair set. The couches come with OuterShell, which is a built-in cover that helps protect the couch cushions from the elements (and stray bird poops). The performance fabric is made from recyclable materials, and the covers are machine washable. Julian still has to see how the couch fares New York winters, but so far, it’s sturdy and comfortable. We like that the couch is made with Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood. It’s also backed by a ten-year warranty and available in four different fabric options.

Photograph: Martin Cizmar

We really like this cooler from RTIC, and clipping the on-page coupon gets you 10 percent off the normal price, bringing it within $10 of the best discount we’ve seen. The rotomolded 45-quart cooler is heavy, but the padded handles make carrying it easier, and tester Martin Cizmar hasn’t experienced any issues with ice retention. And unlike coolers from Yeti, this one actually has its full listed capacity available inside. All the better to store your beer.

We’ve recommended the Albany Park Barton in our Couch Buying Guide for years. It’s soft and supportive, with deep seats and wide arms so you can put down your coffee cup or phone without needing an extra table. There are many different fabrics to choose from, and you can choose the stain of the wooden legs too. Assembly wasn’t too difficult—just be prepared to take out a lot of recycling afterward. The couch also comes with a 30-day trial so you can try it before committing.

Home Depot is offering up to 35 percent off a variety of appliances for Labor Day, including washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, and various bundles. This discount also applies to a few robot vacuums that we like from Roborock and iRobot, as well as a large selection of window air conditioners we recommend. If you’re in the market for a new home appliance, this sale is worth checking out.

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August 21, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Faraday Future pivots to crypto and AI as car sales falter

by admin August 18, 2025

Amid struggles in its EV business, cash-starved Faraday Future is pivoting to crypto and AI.

Summary

Faraday Future is pivoting to crypto and embodied AI
The firm hopes its crypto treasury will attract capital and help it raise cash for its business
So far, Faraday Future has produced only 16 of its FF 91s vehicles

The struggling EV startup Faraday Future is pivoting to crypto and AI. On Sunday, August 17, EV startup Faraday Future announced the launch of a treasury product, as well as a new focus on embodied AI.

Faraday Future is launching the C10 Treasury product, a weighted basket of the top 10 crypto assets, excluding stablecoins. The fund will allocate 80% of the funds according to the index and actively manage the other 20% for greater returns.

The fund is aiming for $500 million to $1 billion in initial crypto asset purchases, with an initial purchase of $30 million. Moreover, the company hopes to earn an estimated 3% to 5% in staking yields, which it will use to fund stock buybacks and innovation in its core business.

Faraday Future’s business struggles

Faraday Future hopes to leverage crypto and AI to reinvigorate interest in its business. According to the firm, the goal is to combine the short-cycle crypto business with the long-cycle embodied AI for electric vehicles.

“The next decade could be a super long bull cycle for the crypto market,” said Ian Calderon, FF Co-Creation Officer. “FF is building a dual-engine circular growth system — combining the long-cycle, high-value EAI EV ecosystem with the short-cycle, high-velocity Crypto ecosystem. These two flywheels will empower each other, redefining what’s possible in mobility and financial innovation.”

Once dubbed a potential Tesla competitor, Faraday Future’s business has been struggling. By January 2025, the company had only produced 16 of its flagship FF 91 vehicles. Most were given to employees and advocates.

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Sega Sammy inadvertently posts internal sales data to its public website

by admin June 24, 2025

Sega Sammy has inadvertently shared internal sales numbers publicly in a presentation posted to its investor relations website.

A table of sales – thought to have been hidden from public view – was archived online before Sega noticed the error and removed the document from its website.

The figures recounted sales of most of Sega Sammy’s gaming portfolio over the last five years, including Persona 5 Royal, Sonic Frontiers, and Team Sonic Racing, which have sold 7.25m, 4.57m, and 3.5m copies, respectively.

Here’s the full table:

Game Title
FY2020/3
FY2021/3
FY2022/3
FY2023/3
FY2024/3
FY2025/3
Total Sales

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
0
0
0
0
1,180
480
1,660

Like a Dragon: The Man Who Erased Their Name
0
0
0
0
740
220
960

Persona 3 Reload
0
0
0
0
1,220
850
2,070

Sonic Superstars
0
0
0
0
1,810
620
2,430

Sonic Frontiers
0
0
0
3,200
760
610
4,570

Total War: Warhammer 3
0
0
960
580
420
380
2,340

Shin Megami Tensei V (Including Vengeance)
0
0
990
150
10
960
2,110

Yakua: Like a Dragon
450
720
410
240
680
360
2,860

Persona 5 Royal (including Remaster)
1,030
700
350
1,820
1,600
1,750
7,250

Team Sonic Racing
1,380
870
520
310
200
220
3,500

Total War: Three Kingdoms
2,100
410
230
230
170
70
3,210

(in thousand units)

Sega recently confirmed plans to open a flagship store in Tokyo, Japan.

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June 24, 2025 0 comments

Dune Awakening is the perfect blend of survival, MMORPG, and house envy

Game Reviews

Dune Awakening worms its way past one million sales, Funcom’s best performing game to date

by admin June 24, 2025

Dune Awakening has passed one million sales, making it the best performing Funcom game ever.

Just 18 days since the early adopter launch, the game has managed to do what Conan Exiles took a year to achieve. Even now, the game is pulling in roughly 175,000 concurrent player peaks.

In an infographic released alongside the milestone announcement it’s been revealed players have been eaten by worms 816,720 times, 628,807 deaths have occurred in the game’s endgame PvP Deep Desert, and 121,941 guilds have been formed among other interesting tidbits

Watch our video review here!Watch on YouTube

The game kicked off to a mighty start and has shown little sign of losing momentum. It blasted past 142,000 concurrent players on 10th June following its public release. There’s been a little bit of controversy via the PvP Deep Desert, as many players aren’t finding the fun in perilous free-for-alls. The director initially stood firm on the direction of the endgame, but has earlier today announced plans to expand the PvE portion of this region.

Alongside this future change to the Deep Desert, hints at what future major content updates will look like have also been revealed. We know every three-to-four months a Hagga-Basin-style map should be added, which should do wonders for the crowd who like popping back in to play every once in a while.

If you’re curious about whether you’ll enjoy Dune: Awakening, why not check out our review. “Dune: Awakening is a harsh survival game, an intriguing RPG, and a fierce open world PvP game all in one,” it reads. “Somehow, it pulls it off.”

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June 24, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Sega’s leaked sales figures show Sonic’s new frontier is heading in the right direction

by admin June 23, 2025

Over the weekend, Sega accidentally leaked sales figures for a number of its key franchises, revealing – among others – the sales of its open zone game Sonic Frontiers.

The numbers were accidentally included on the company’s latest fiscal report and have since been swiftly removed, but not before fans shared the numbers on ResetEra.

Total sales of Sonic Frontiers were 4.57m, while Sonic Superstars was 2.43m, and Team Sonic Racing was 3.5m. Meanwhile, as officially revealed by the company, Sonic X Shadow Generations sold 2.3m units.

Sonic Frontiers | Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube

Elsewhere in the leak, Persona 5 Royal has sold 7.25m units – as expected – while Persona 3 Reload just 2.07m units. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth sold 1.66m units, and Like A Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name just 960,000.

Sega also officially revealed Metaphor: ReFantazio sold 2m units.

The company critically had a great year in 2024. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth was well received by series fans, Metaphor: ReFantazio was an outstanding new RPG, and Sonic X Shadow Generations was one of the best-reviewed Sonic games in recent memory. But this reception seemingly hasn’t translated to strong sales.

Still, the figure for Sonic Frontiers does stand out. Released back in 2022, it proves the game has had a long sales tail – even if that’s been spurred on by discounts. And, as the pre-eminent 3D game in the series, its sales have continued alongside both the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and 3 films.

Back in November 2022, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka stated Sonic Frontiers’ open zone design was the “cornerstone of future Sonic games”. There will be high hopes, then, for its presumed sequel.

Sonic Frontiers established the “open zone” design (rather than open world), which emphasised exploration as well as speed and took advantage of current hardware technology (despite its egregious pop-in).

Sonic Superstars, released a year later, has just over half the sales of Sonic Frontiers. A 2D game, it perhaps didn’t sit well with fans after the forward-thinking Frontiers.

As for Sonic X Shadow Generations, it has sold well since its release last year, spurred on by the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film. However, it’s still a remake of an older game. And it seems, as much as Sega trades in nostalgia, it’s the open zone advancement in design that fans have responded to with their wallets.

The fact Team Sonic Racing has outsold more traditional platformers also bodes well for the forthcoming Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.

In short, Team Sonic is heading in the right direction, and expectations will be high for the original game that follows Sonic Frontiers.

As Eurogamer’s Alex Donaldson discussed with Iizuka recently, Sonic has gone from “fighting to survive” to a global megastar in the past 10 years.

“When I moved over from Tokyo to Los Angeles, it was like an ‘oh my god’ moment,” Iizuka said. “Like, we need to save the brand, or this brand isn’t going to be around for much longer.”

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June 23, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Sega just accidentally leaked its own sales numbers, and somehow Sonic Frontiers sold more than the last two mainline Yakuzas combined, but Persona 5’s putting the rest of the stable to shame

by admin June 22, 2025

First reported by VGC, Sega Sammy Holdings⁠—Sega’s delightfully-named parent company⁠—mistakenly uploaded sales numbers for 11 major games to a public page on the company website. ResetEra user –R uploaded the full table to the forum, allowing us to still peep those numbies after Sega took the original page down.

The original table charts earnings by fiscal year from 2020 to 2025, but for simplicity, here are the total units sold for each game across the entire span:

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: 1.66 million
Like a Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name: 960,000
Persona 3 Reload: 2.07 million
Sonic Superstars: 2.43 million
Sonic Frontiers: 4.57 million
Total War: Warhammer 3: 2.34 million
Shin Megami Tensei V: 2.11 million
Yakuza: Like a Dragon: 2.86 million
Persona 5 Royal: 7.25 million
Team Sonic Racing: 3.50 million
Total War: Three Kingdoms: 3.21 million

The biggest surprise for me is how well Sonic games are selling to this day⁠—possibly helped a great deal by the movies⁠—as well as how slowly recent Yakuza/Like a Dragon games have sold by comparison. Sonic Frontiers moved almost as many units as Yakuza 7, Infinite Wealth, and The Man Who Erased His Name combined.

Frontiers is a game that seemed to come and go without much fanfare, while Like a Dragon appears to be at the height of its popularity. I wouldn’t worry about Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio or anything, though: Those are still strong showings, and the developer just cranks games out at an almost unheard-of pace for the 2020s game industry, more than making up for any one game’s relative lack of success.

Two more things stood out to me. First, nothing even comes close to Persona 5 Royal’s 7 million units sold, and this data doesn’t even account for Persona 5’s first three years of non-Royal circulation, likely putting its total north of 10 million.

Second are the notable omissions of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii and especially Metaphor: ReFantazio. Both were perhaps excluded for having released too close to the end of Sega’s 2025 fiscal year, but Metaphor seems to have sold like gangbusters, and I’m very curious to know how it stacks up.

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June 22, 2025 0 comments