The timeline is the joke and the punchline at once.
Image: Insomniac/Sony / via PlayStation Blog — Jock cover art.
Before launch, Marvel’s Wolverine got dunked as hand-holding cosplay — scent trails nicknamed “fart gas,” QTEs, yellow-paint energy. After launch (Sep 15, 2026), the dunks kept rolling. Then Alinea Analytics’ early sell-through estimates hit the timeline: roughly 1.9 million copies and about $130 million in revenue in three days, according to coverage of those figures in GamesRadar+ and Wccftech.
Label this hard: those are analyst estimates, not a Sony or Insomniac confirmation. Outlets including TBreak, IGN Nordic, and Beebom noted the same gap — no official units or revenue drop from PlayStation. Treat Alinea as a sales-vs-discourse signal, not a ledger stamp.
What the estimates actually say
Per GamesRadar+’s write-up of Alinea / Rhys Elliott: Wolverine’s early PS5 haul (~$130M / ~1.9M) already clears Alinea’s read on Death Stranding 2’s entire PS5 lifetime (~$129M / ~1.8M). Elliott calls it the top-performing new PlayStation Studios PS5 title this year so far, already #6 YTD on PS5 top-grossing despite only a few days on the board — and still well behind Spider-Man 2’s three-day pace (~$250M in Alinea’s framing).
Wccftech’s packaging of the same analyst lane adds more texture: ~1M digital pre-orders in the estimate set, ~22.9% of revenue physical, US about half the player mix (~53%), with smaller UK/France/Canada slices. Again: Alinea methodology is opaque. Useful for “are people buying?” — useless as a press-release substitute.
Image: Insomniac/Sony / via PlayStation Blog — Logan vs The Hand.
The discourse track: Park, “fart gas,” and a hotfix that flinches
The social fight predates day-one. Skill Up’s hand-holding clip fed a Gene Park “fart gas” dunk (Sep 10), then rode through Kotaku / TheGamer / IGN coverage that separated Scent Trails from Navigation Assist and noted the gas can stick around even with some options off. Insomniac’s James Stevenson, via IGN Nordic reporting, framed scent as mutant senses — not a permanent yellow brick road.
Launch-week dunks stacked QTEs, linearity, and yellow-paint memes on top. Then the patch notes blinked.
According to Kotaku (Sep 19), hotfix v1.001.005 cut crash pain and reduced opacity on Scent Trails / Audio Sense, while Insomniac said it’s exploring a future toggle. (There’s a slight clock conflict with MP1st’s Sep 18 ~10:17pm stamp — we date the Kotaku report Sep 19 and treat the exact live minute as unsettled.) Player before/after clips (Radec via Kotaku; GameRoll via TheGamer) are the public proof-of-nerf, not official stills.
That’s the important read: Insomniac acknowledged the UX heat without rewriting the game into a walking sim. Discourse got a volume knob. The combat blockbuster stayed the combat blockbuster.
Scores in conflict — note both
GamesRadar+ / Wccftech Sep 18 snapshots put Metascore around 77 (earlier snapshots floated 78). User score ~6.4 in that GamesRadar+ window — and scores move. We’re not inventing tweet counts or locking a forever number.
On the praise side of the split: combat and performances still get love; GamesRadar+’s own review line — “never a bad experience, just an underwhelming one” — is the middle-finger-to-both-extremes quote. Elliott’s frame is blunter: the DiScOuRsE crowd is not the same population as the buyers (“passive mainstream” energy).
Discourse ≠ flop
Three days is a sprint, not a career. The long-term tail is open. Alinea ≠ Sony. Metascore 77–78 is a range, not a moral judgment. Hotfix opacity is a concession, not a rewrite.
But if your feed only shows fart-gas memes, you’re watching a different movie than the one Alinea is scoring. Wolverine is getting shredded online — and, on the early estimate board, still selling like adamantium.
