Elden Ring has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, publisher Bandai Namco confirmed. A critical darling and Game of the Year winner at The Game Awards 2022, Elden Ring reached the milestone just a few days shy of its one-year anniversary — February 25. The total combines the shipment and sales figures for both physical and digital copies sold. It’s worth noting that the game reached that number without any post-launch story DLC or expansion. For comparison, it took Dark Souls 3 — FromSoftware’s much-beloved 2016 title — four years to sell 10 million copies. Elden Ring doubled that feat in just one year.
“The companies would like to thank everyone who has played this game from the bottom of their hearts, and will continue to develop various ways for the fans to enjoy the world of ELDEN RING in the future,” Bandai Namco said in a prepared statement. Elden Ring’s achievement is simply on another level here — approaching close to the last reported sales figures of God of War (2018), which has sold 23 million units as of November 2022. FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which was also a multi-platform release, managed to sell over five million copies by July 2020. Meanwhile, the much-revered Bloodborne, which was restricted to the PS4, sold just over 2 million copies by the end of 2015.
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If anything, Elden Ring’s feat proves how single-player games can still emerge successful in current video game climate that rewards live service models with battle passes and in-game purchases. The game also highlighted underwhelming open-world design choices prevalent across the industry and pioneered by Ubisoft, dictated by endless map icons, waypoints, an objective checklist, and too much handholding — essentially, distracting from the wonders of exploration.
The last announced sales details for Elden Ring were in August when it crossed 16 million in sales, with those numbers likely receiving a boost during the Christmas season, thanks to the buzz it garnered at The Game Awards.
As the one-year anniversary nears, fans have been wondering whether FromSoftware has some Elden Ring DLC in the works. After all, during his acceptance speech at The Game Awards, director Hidetaka Miyazaki promised that more content was on its way. “As for Elden Ring, we have several more things we want to do,” he said, at the time. As usual, data miners such as Sekiro Dubi have been hard at work, uncovering cut content in the game that could potentially emerge as DLC content. One of them was revealed as the Colosseum DLC, wherein players could partake in PvP matches against others online. The arenas always existed in the main game, but their doors were inaccessible during gameplay until the update rolled out.
Last year, FromSoftware also confirmed development on Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon, where mecha robots duke it out on a dystopian post-apocalyptic world to claim control of a mysterious energy source. Directed by Masaru Yamamura, designer on 2019’s Sekiro, FromSoftware’s next game will let players assemble their own robots and pilot them in fast-paced missions that test their mettle.
Elden Ring is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.
