For the 19th Anniversary of TRON 2.0 (released August 26, 2003 in North America), I thought I'd discuss the potential lifetime number of copies sold. Both digital and physical. (This is only going to cover the PC version, not the Xbox and GBA versions.)

Back in 2017, when I stopped covering SteamSpy's reporting of the ownership numbers of TRON 2.0 on Steam: The most optimistic number placed total sales at approximately 48,000 copies, since the game was released on Steam in late 2014.

GOG started selling TRON 2.0 in late 2016, but unfortunately I'm not aware of any resource that could estimate the number of copies sold there. So I can't account for that.




https://steamspy.com/app/327740
SteamSpy no longer provides numbers for free, and now only reports a range. At the time I visited this page, the site reported a minimum of 200,000 copies of TRON 2.0 sold on Steam. But depending on when you visit, this fluctuates, and I've seen the range start at 100,000.

Much as I'd love it to be true, I don't believe the 200,000 estimate is correct. So I'm going with the more realistic minimum of 100,000 copies of TRON 2.0 sold on Steam. I could see the number of copies sold increasing from 48,000 to 100,000 between 2017 and 2022.

Aside from being unable to account for the number of copies sold on GOG, there's also the fact that people who bought TRON RUN/r during its Early Access phase on Steam, each received a copy of TRON 2.0 for free.

The TRON RUN/r Early Access period ran from late 2015 to early 2016, and based on SteamSpy data from the time, the most optimistic number of owners of TRON RUN/r on Steam — before the 2016 Steam Summer Sale — was approximately 13,000.

So while there probably weren't 13,000 people who bought TRON RUN/r during its Early Access phase on Steam: It gives us a ballpark idea of the number of copies of TRON 2.0 that were given to TRON RUN/r owners for free.


https://web.archive.org/web/20130711054926/http://www.gamespot.com/news/npd-weekly-pc-game-sales-chart-6074916
In terms of the number of physical copies of TRON 2.0 sold, no official sales number was ever released publicly, that I'm aware of. What we do know, is that TRON 2.0 debuted at #2 on the NPD PC Sales chart during the week of August 24-30, 2003.

Even without an official number for the physical sales of TRON 2.0 on PC, I would think that — in terms of lifetime sales, by this point in 2022 — approximately another 100,000 copies sold would be a reasonable estimate. My guess of 100,000 is based on the game debuting in the top ten, and the Producer of TRON 2.0 at BVI/Disney saying it sold reasonably well in a message forum.

So, optimistically, if we add roughly 100,000 digital sales and 100,000 physical sales, we're probably looking at close to 200,000 copies of TRON 2.0 sold as of the game's 19th Anniversary.

Since no public sales figure was released for the number of physical copies of TRON 2.0 sold on PC (that I'm aware of) . . . I pinged Kevin Lambert (the Lead Programmer of TRON 2.0 when he was at Monolith Productions) on the 19th Anniversary of TRON 2.0, and asked if he could provide any insight.


https://twitter.com/kevinlambert/status/1563023603477925889
Unfortunately, Kevin wasn’t able to provide any additional information. But I really appreciate him taking the time to respond!