Skyrim sells 3.5 million copies in 48 hours

We knew that Bethesda's Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim would sell well when it came out on its infamous launch date, November 11th, 2011. And now we have the official stats from ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company)'s CEO himself. 3.5 million copies in 48 hours? You can go ahead and check that box, since Skyrim has reached just those awe-inspiring numbers. We now just have to wait for the first week of sales to finalize in order to see if Skyrim is on track to beat the record currently held by Call of Duty's newly released Modern Warfare 3.

Robert Altman, CEO of ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) announced that "We are grateful for the fans' response to Skyrim. Todd Howard and his team at Bethesda Game Studios have crafted a very special game. Anticipation for Skyrim has surpassed any game in our company's history, and we are pleased that sales and reviews have reflected the quality and hours of amazing gameplay it provides." Kudos to legendary game designer Todd Howard and his team at Bethesda indeed. They deserve every ounce of praise they get, having personally seen the game being played in real life.

From our most recent article about Skyrim, we know that seven million copies of the game were shipped to retailers, which comes out to be over 50% of stock already having been sold. Bethesda director Todd Howard proclaimed that "Without a doubt, this has been our most ambitious project ever. After over three years of development, we're finally excited to get it into everyone's hands." The latest Elder Scrolls game has also encountered stellar success on Steam, where it has topped the Steam gaming charts with more than 287,000 players playing concurrently. Now that's a game launch success.

Have a peek at this trailer for the game if you've not seen the game before:

[via IGN]