27 to a 10 million success?
At that point, Last of Us Part II was close to 12 million than 10 million and this is after the Last of Us Remake release. What you ignore is that Last of Us was given away in over 20 console bundles for 6 years, which increased the volume of sales.
Do you now Last of Us Part II surpassed the original game in revenue on the NPD charts in less than a month? That goes to show you how much bundles played a factor in the sales.
I would also like to add that Last of Us Part II is in the top 20 best selling games of the year for the first half of 2023 in Europe. Last of Us didn't need bundles to reach this many sales, so Last of Us Part II is actually a bigger success.
I'm not ignoring it, hell, it might even strengthen my point. A metric fuckton of people played The Last of Us Part I. Some bought it new, some got it bundled, some bought it used and some pirated it (which probably makes it so that much more than 27 million people played it), and one fact remains: it was universally loved. It was a surprise hit for both Naughty Dog and Sony. It became a cultural phenomenon, it hit the zeitgest. I can't remember the last time besides TLOU where a game had as much discussion about it and in such a meaningful way. Sometimes nowadays threads STILL pop up talking about the goddamn ending - that's how much impact the game had. The recent HBO series confirms it has mass appeal with nerds, normies, everyone.
Fast forward to 2020. Hype is absolutely through the roof, marketing is going crazy, everyone can't wait to see the continuation of Joel and Ellie's story. TLOU 2 is at that point the most expensive Sony game ever, with massive expectations behind it. A sequel to such a massive game and now established franchise is supposed to have better results, to be more successful. The game comes out, sells 4 million copies in the first 3 days out of the gate (surely mostly pre-orders fueled by the hype) and then...nothing. Radio silence, while they massively discount TLOU 2 and keep updating sales from every other game besides it. Two years later and they finally come out with the 10 million copies sold, which is the same as...fucking Ghost of Tsushima? Again, don't misunderstand me, GoT is a very good game, but COME ON now. The 2 developers and games are not even in the same ballpark when it comes to expectations. So yeah, that's why I cannot call TLOU 2 a success. The only thing it succeeded at was fracturing the fanbase.