Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

The budget figure comes from a period newspaper report: under $10 million, two years, 50 full-time staff. Against that, Microsoft's own contemporaneous press releases document an unusually fast commercial start — 1.4 million units shipped to retailers across the US, UK and Germany in the first month of retail, four consecutive weeks at the top of the US PC charts, over 100,000 copies sold in Germany within three days, and 2 million worldwide by 27 January 2000, three months after release, topping the charts in the United States, Japan, the UK, Germany, France, Australia and South Korea. US retail price was $49.95. Year-by-year US tracking gives 469,376 units and $20.2 million in 1999 (second-highest-grossing US PC title of the year), 595,016 units and $26.2 million in 2000, and 478,557 units and $19.4 million in 2001 — still tenth for that year, two years after launch. Germany awarded it Platinum within a month and Double Platinum by February 2000; the UK's ELSPA awarded Platinum. No single lifetime total for the standalone 1999 game has ever been published, and figures for the Gold Edition, HD Edition and Definitive Edition should not be folded into it. One caveat worth recording: the release date is genuinely contested. Reference works give late September 1999, but Microsoft's own press releases describe the game as only just reaching US shelves on 18 October 1999 and call October its 'first month of retail', with worldwide availability planned for November.