One thing was certain before Fallout 4’s launch and that was that it was lining up to be the most anticipated game Bethesda has ever released. It’s always hard to tell with a game like Fallout 4 just how successful it will actually be due to the fact that all the hype based around it could be coming from a small set of industry people and vocal fans.

Now that Fallout’s launch is behind us one more thing is certain, the high levels of anticipation came from more than a few vocal fans sitting behind computer screens drowning in an infinite supply of Mountain Dew and promotional Nuca-Cola drinks. The anticipation came from all walks of life, from the sports fan to the old lady across the hall that spends her evenings watching reruns of Downton Abbey.

Bethesda consists of a smart much of people and they realised their long running RPG series was about to break into the mainstream and take our non-post-apocalyptic world by storm. With that in mind they shipped a staggering 12 million copies of the game on launch day, to put that in context their previous record was set by Skyrim which shipped 7 million units at launch.

While that number tells us the number of units shipped to retail it does not clarify how many units actually sold, for example while Skyrim shipped 7 million units it only sold 3.5 million of them during its first 48 hours on the market. However it’s safe to assume that Fallout 4 is doing pretty good so far considering a number of retailers have claimed it was their most pre-ordered game of the year and it’s also selling extremely well digitally.

We’ll be sure to let you know how many copies of the game were actually sold as soon as Bethesda releases the information. If you’ve been too busy preparing for the apocalypse to get a copy of Fallout 4 you can purchase one here.