A Modest Beginning for the Old Country

Mafia: The Old Country just dropped for PC and consoles, and you’d think it’s rolling out with a bang, right? Well, not quite. Kinda lukewarm, if you ask me, especially compared to its big brothers. I mean, don’t ask me for exact numbers yet—it’s too early to say if it’ll sink or swim, but it’s not exactly lighting things up like Mafia 3 did.

And get this—there’s this image of a knife fight that somehow encapsulates the whole vibe. Don’t know why, but it did for me.

Announced back in August 2024, this thing hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC as of August 8, 2025. It’s Hangar 13’s latest brainchild, holding a “Strong” rating over at OpenCritic with a solid 77 average. Folks are all about its production values, getting misty-eyed with nostalgia for that OG Mafia storytelling style. But, you know, critics are feeling like it’s a bit too… safe? Like, yeah, they’re nodding but not shouting from the rooftops.

Here’s a fun tidbit—on Saturday, just after launch, it hit a peak of 35,247 Steam players. Mafia 3 used to hit just under 48,000. Big shoes, smaller feet. Sure, it’s hanging in there behind Counter-Strike 2 and Battlefield 6 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart, but you gotta wonder if that’s just ‘cause there ain’t much else to buy right now, you know?

Anyway, um, full disclosure: play counts on Steam. I kinda geeked out over it—can you blame me? Mafia games have these beastly numbers. Heck, the classic Mafia from 2002, only 9,112 peak players but it’s got this cult thing going on. Mafia 2? Nearly 30k. Meanwhile, The Old Country’s chillin’ with 35k, give or take. Just numbers, but still… makes you think.

Plus, sales predictions are flying around like confetti—Gamalytic and PlayTracker put it at 186,000 copies in just over a day. There’s some expert somewhere claiming games sell 20 times their peak in week one. If true, we’re talking maybe 700k sales on Steam alone. But that sounds like a stretch, doesn’t it? Front-loaded single-player gigs like these gotta hustle in the early days to make their mark.

Here’s where it gets head-scratchy: PC might make up one-third of sales? Seriously, every bit’s crucial if you’re The Old Country, solely on Steam in the PC world. And PlayStation? Sitting with 4,000 reviews, way below Mafia 3’s thousands more. Xbox isn’t blowing away any records either with less than 300 reviews—by August 9, by the way.

From what I see, total sales are still crawling under the 1 million mark. And for a franchise that boasted over 35 mil? That’s… humble. Calculators are out: to break even at $60 mil from sales, they need over 1.7 million copies moved. Planning, marketing, salaries, all the good stuff we aren’t privy to—yeah, lotta guessing games right now. All I can say? Mafia: The Old Country is just, you know, moseying along.

Sources? Gamalytic, PlayTracker—take ’em or leave ’em.