Total War sells over 36M copies, Creative Assembly now biggest UK developer

Warhammer
(Image credit: Sega)

The venerable Total War series of strategy games, which turns 21 this year, has sold over 36 million copies, Creative Assembly announced. Total War: Three Kingdoms accounts for a good portion of that—a smash hit in China, Three Kingdoms became the fastest-selling game in the series when it moved a million copies in a single week. The Warhammer games have been massive as well, with preorders for Warhammer 3 topping the Steam charts. Creative Assembly says 1.5 million people play Total War every month.

The developer now has 800 permanent staff and has opened a third studio in West Sussex, which it says makes Creative Assembly "the largest UK games developer". Studio director Gareth Edmondson said, "This is an incredibly exciting time for Creative Assembly with the highly-anticipated Total War: Warhammer III on the horizon and our new sci-fi-shooter IP in development."

That sci-fi shooter is the game mentioned when director Neil Blomkamp visited the studio, which we still don't know much about. According to a blog post on CA's website, "This ambitious multiplayer title is a fresh take on the FPS genre that will allow players to embrace a variety of creative playstyles."

We don't know when to expect that one, but Total War: Warhammer 3 is due out in late 2021.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.