In an interview with Dengeki Online, Sword Art Online games Producer Yousuke Futami announced total sales for all SAO games have now surpassed 5,6 million units worldwide.
When speaking about SAO Fatal Bullet and the popularity of the game and its DLC content, Futami mentioned: "Thanks to everyone's support, total sales of the series are now around 5.6 million units. This year alone I think we sold over 900.000 copies. The series is very popular outside Japan in particular."
While unspecified, when Futami mentioned "this year" he's most probably talking about the last fiscal year, which ended in March 2020. The anime adaptations of SAO are incredibly popular outside Japan so there's no surprise here hearing the games are performing well worldwide.
As a reminder, here's the list of Sword Art Online games released on consoles counting in those total sales numbers:
- Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment, developed by Aquria, first released in Japan on March 14, 2013, on PlayStation Portable
- Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment, Aquria, first released on April 24 2014, on PlayStation Vita
- Sword Art Online: Lost Song, developed by Artdink, first released on March 26, 2015, for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita
- Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, Aquria, first released on October 27, 2016, on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita
- Accel World VS Sword Art Online: Millennium Twilight, Artdink, first released on March 16, 2017, on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita
- Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, developed by Dimps, first released in Japan on February 8, 2018, on PlayStation 4
The next game in the series is Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris, developed by Aquria. It's the first SAO console game to adapt part of the Alicization arc of the original novel. The second part of the game features a new original story instead of adapting the second part of Alicization. SAOAL will launch on July 9 in Japan and July 10 worldwide, on PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam. Here are additional details on the game's original story and characters, on the planned DLCs, and some comments from Producer Futami, including the game's length and regarding a Switch version.
The interview published by Dengeki Online is with SAO author Reki Kawahara, SAO Editor Kazuma Miki, and SAO console games Producer Yousuke Futami. We will be soon publishing a translated summary of the interview, so stay tuned like Ulala in Space Channel 5 would say.