SimCity sells 1.1 million copies, breaks Origin concurrency records

SimCity's everyone's favourite whipping boy at the moment, but that hasn't stopped it selling like tasty Canadian hotcakes and attracting more users to Origin than ever before.

EA announced sales figures for the Maxis effort via press release, noting 1.1 million units sold in the first two weeks. Of these, around 54% were made digitally and 44% directly through Origin.

For all the complaints about the sim's downtime and connectivity issues, Origin recorded 1.3 million concurrent players, a new record, during SimCity's launch window.

Players have totted up over 15 million hours of online gameplay, and founded over 5.7 million new cities. More than 780 million buildings have been built, and players have laid enough road and railroad tracks to circle the globe more than 40,000 times.

EA took the opportunity to point out, again, that Maxis has ramped up server capacity in response to demand, citing a 400% increase, along with 40 times better server response and various fixes.

"SimCity had a great weekend with sales strong across both North America and Europe, adding to overwhelming demand at launch that has us tracking well beyond expectations for the game," COO Peter Moore said.

"SimCity is one of the storied brands in gaming, and Maxis delivered a game re-envisioned and engineered for the online age."

The good news comes a little too late for the publisher, which lowered its guidance in January, ultimately resulting in CEO John Riccitiello's resignation today.

Players who bought into SimCity durings its more than rocky launch have been offered one of eight free games.