China is Total War: Three Kingdoms' biggest market

Total War: Three Kingdoms developer Creative Assembly has confirmed what many suspected: China is indeed the game's largest market.

Total War: Three Kingdoms, in case you missed it, has been shooting up the Steam charts since release. It not only broke series records by a significant margin, the game even managed to claim Steam's biggest launch in 2019 so far.

Total War games have always been popular but remained niche compared to shooters and the like, but Three Kingdoms is taking the series into uncharted territory as far as popularity and sales.

For Creative Assembly, this shift was not at all sudden.

"We know that Total War has had a big following in China for a great many years. It's just now that we're starting to reach those guys with our products, and they're putting money down and engaging with us much more," chief product officer Rob Bartholomew told Games Industry.

"With Three Kingdoms, that Romance of the Three Kingdoms subject matter is obviously doing a lot to help us along with that."

China specifically made up a large portion of the game's pre-orders, according to Bartholomew, with some of these coming from players completely new to the series, motivated by the Three Kingdoms setting.

"China, in particular, has dramatically moved up through the market share rankings for our titles over the last four or five years," Bartholomew revealed.

"We're now at a point where China is absolutely the most major market for Three Kingdoms. And it's definitely hovering around in that top six collection of territories that we have for all of our games that we're selling at the moment."

This growth is also partially boosted by Steam's own growth in China and Korea, which is one reason the series is sticking with Valve's platform. "We tend to grow when Steam grows," added Bartholomew.

You can read the full interview at the link above, or check out our reviews round-up.