NPD “Elden Ring” Sales Continue to Impress in New Report

Elden Ring continues to be one of the top-selling early IPs of all time, with no caveats like Cyberpunk 2077’s instant drop after its initial 13.7 million sales in its first three weeks.

Instead, Elden Ring sold 12 million copies in its three weeks and remained at the top of the NPD charts this month as the best-selling game. It’s the best-selling game of 2022 according to the NDP, and that seems likely to continue to be true until at least the fall, when a new Call of Duty arrives. And speaking of Call of Duty, Elden Ring is now the second best-selling game of the last twelve months behind Call of Duty: Vanguard itself.

Here is the NPD list for March 2022:

1. Ring of Elden
2. Gran Turismo 7
3. Kirby and the Forgotten Land
4. MLB: The Show 22
5. Forbidden Horizon West
6. Pokemon Legends: Arceus
7. WWE 2K22
8. Mario Kart 8
9. Call of Duty Vanguard
10. Stranger of Heaven: Final Fantasy Origin

You may see new entries there, but many classics like Mario Kart 8 and Vanguard stay on lists like these indefinitely with incredible long-term sales. Keep in mind the NPD is sales in the US so it’s not an Elden Ring Japan boosted placement it’s a really huge hit in the West unlike anything we’ve seen from Dark Souls or Bloodborne before it, as loved as those games have been.

As we look towards the end of the year, I don’t think there’s anything that can compete with Elden Ring sales unless the new Call of Duty itself (Activision said they were taking off in 2023, not 2022, remember). There are high-profile games coming like Starfield and God of War Ragnarok (if they reach their proposed release windows), but those are exclusive to Xbox and PlayStation respectively, so it seems unlikely they could. match cross-platform sales on PC. Also, Starfield, like all Xbox games, is day one of Game Pass, so “sales” means next to nothing for most Xbox games these days, at least in terms of things like NPD graphics.

I also expect Elden Ring to continue to have a long tail as more and more players are convinced that they will have to play what seems destined to be GOTY for 2022, on top of all those milestones of sale. Again, this is drastically different from Cyberpunk 2077 where throughout 2021 sales fell off a cliff from their initial highs once word of mouth moved into the other direction, that the game was poor on consoles in particular (so much so that Sony pulled it from sale for six months), which drove down sales. Elden Ring had the advantage of immediate acclaim from critics and fans, which will only boost sales in the medium to long term.

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