Elden Ring’s launch is 2nd-most successful in past 12 months

digitaltrends.com:

Elden Ring‘s launch month sales have made it the second-most successful gaming release in the past 12 months, behind only Call of Duty: Vanguard, which was released in November 2021. This report comes from Mat Piscatella of the NPD group.

Elden Ring launched last month and quickly took over both consoles and PCs. It released to record-breaking sales almost immediately in the U.K. according to GamesIndustry.biz and is following suit in the U.S..

With such a successful launch, Elden Ring was naturally the bestselling game of February 2022, as well as the entirety of 2022 so far. Piscatella also reports that after one month on the market, Elden Ring is now ranked as the fifth bestselling game of the 12-month period ending February 2022. It ranked highest on Steam and Xbox platforms in February and placed second on PlayStation consoles.

This success was felt even by other releases in the industry. In its second week, Elden Ring‘s sales still managed to overtake that of PlayStation’s Grand Turismo 7 in the U.K. despite its overall sales being down 61% from its launch week, according to gamesindustry.biz.

Elden Ring‘s success isn’t surprising considering its critical reception, but success like this for a very divisive genre can’t be scoffed at. Elden Ring has received tons of “word of mouth” advertisement through social media from genre veterans and newcomers alike. When the dust settles, we could be looking at a historic sales hit for FromSoftware.