Elden Ring Is Now America's Best-Selling Game Of The Last Year, Topping Even CoD: Vanguard

Elden Ring Is Now America's Best-Selling Game Of The Last Year, Topping Even CoD: Vanguard

Elden Ring Is Now The US's Best-Selling Game Of The Last Year, Topping Even CoD: Vanguard

Elden Ring is selling better than the newest Call of Duty game.

By Eddie Makuch on May 13, 2022 at 6:29AM PDT

From Software's Elden Ring has surpassed Call of Duty: Vanguard and is now the best-selling premium game in the US for the trailing 12-month period ending April 2022.

The NPD Group made the announcement on Friday as part of its sales report for April. Elden Ring continues to be the best-selling game of 2022; it has sold more than 13.4 million copies worldwide as of March 31, publisher Bandai Namco announced during its own earnings briefing this week. The NPD does not reveal specific sales numbers, but the game has surely grown bigger since Bandai's numbers don't count April.

As for Vanguard, Activision has been open about how the game failed to sell as well as it hoped, though it has not disclosed a sales figure for the title. The publisher said it failed to execute with the game, which was developed by Sledgehammer, and that the WWII setting did not resonate with everyone. Despite all that, Vanguard was the best-selling game in the US for 2021, with Black Ops Cold War finishing second.

April 2022's best-selling game in the US was Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which has the highest launch-month dollar sales for any Lego title in the history of the series. It was the No. 1 best-seller across Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam. For Nintendo specifically, it was a notable launch, as The Skywalker Saga is the first game not made by Nintendo to rank No. 1 on a Nintendo platform for a given month since March 2021 (Monster Hunter: Rise).

Looking ahead, Activision will launch Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and a new Warzone experience later this year, the development of which is being led by Infinity Ward.

Also of note, Battlefield 2042 is the 5th best-selling game in the US over the past year, despite the game not selling as well as EA hoped. Going forward, EA has said it stands behind DICE as a developer and that the Battlefield series remains important to EA.

Top 10 Games In The US (12 Months Ending April '22)

1. Elden Ring
2. Call of Duty: Vanguard
3. Madden NFL 22
4. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl*
5. Battlefield 2042
6. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
7. Far Cry 6
8. FIFA 22
9. Resident Evil Village
10. Pokemon Legends: Arceus*

*Digital sales not included

But COD Vanguard is awful

Pokémon sold more. It sold 14.65m. And sold it on one device instead of 6.

I like how 8 of those 10 games are absolutely terrible. You americans have some seriously fucked up taste. Luckily a good game on #1 at least.

So serious question: would you recommend Elden Ring to someone that has had a tough time with the "soulsborne" sub-genre? I heard it's really difficult, but I also heard due to it's structure you can go level up elsewhere and then come back and have an easier time with bosses that were hard.

I Really want to like the style of game but they're just too brutal for me, the trial-and-error aspect really just makes me angry and I end up quitting.

I've played the Surge 1 and 2, Nioh, Dark Souls 3, and a handful of others and I want to like them.

Also how is it on PC now, I heard it had issues but I'm wondering if it is stable now.

Yeah I try not to look at those lists. Too depressing.

I got two words for the general gaming public: stop preordering! The fact that BF 2042 is on that list and yet no one plays it, the fact that COD Vanguard is maligned even by fans, just goes to show those sales come from preorders.

That's worldwide. Elden Ring is top in the US (though digital sales aren't included for Pokemon).

@Jag85: The Elden Ring number is worldwide also. So Pokémon still sold more.

If you don't like the soulsbourne genre after everything you played, it's probably just not for you. There's nothing wrong with that. I will say, Elden ring was the "easiest" soulsbourne game I played. Still pretty tough though

Worth every penny

You're probably right lol. I just feel like I'm missing out 😢 haha😁

And thanks for not calling me a filthy casual and telling me to "get gud"

@mrbojangles25: If the issue you had was difficulty then no. The game offers side exploration to ease difficulty but the mechanics are still near identical to older games.

Saw this news the other day. Very impressive. Kudos to FromSoftware, excellent game.

My shilling wasn't for nothing. I even made mesome buy an Xbox just to play it.

But its not a core Japanime game!!! Persona is core. Halo isnt core. These games arent Core!!

Thank you for not asking for an "easy mode" lol (not all of us on this forum are fromsoft Stans)

MS should have gotten GRRM to write the 'lore' for Halo Infinite.

Why should American gamers care what gamers from other parts of the world think about their tastes in games, just like why gamers from other parts of the world should care what American gamers think about their tastes in games?

We should stop engaging in this type of elitist nonsense and accept that gamers have different tastes and leave it as that.

It's amazing that Elden Ring has already surpassed Vanguard's sales in such a short period of time.

Now, I'm wondering if Elden Ring can ever make more money than another BotW-inspired blockbuster, Genshin Impact.

@st_monica: 0 chance

For my money Elden ring is the most accessible of the series, if you're not a fan of melee combat then go for a ranged or magic build, there are a 1000 guides out there now to really ease your way through, however with all that said you will fail some encounters at least once, you will have to learn and adapt for certain encounters that is just a part of the game. Elden ring is the first souls type game I've actually finished since Dark souls 1 so make of that what you will. As for difficulty what I would say is the game will give back as much as you put in, that is to say lots of exploration/looking up info and setting out with a build/plan will reward you with a far more enjoyable experience (imo) than going in blind not really knowing what you want to do. Some people take the opposite view and are convinced the only way to enjoy a souls type game is to go in blind armed with a tooth pick and clad in your underwear only, this really is an each to their own situation with neither approach being more valid than the other. If these games aren't for you though and you've not really enjoyed any of the previous souls type games then maybe skip it no point wasting money on something you're not going to derive some enjoyment from.

@howmakewood: Yeah, you are right lol. Just found that the gacha waifu game has made $3B, when one of the best-selling RPGs like Skyrim made $620M.

@mesome713: thanks for reminding us. We'll be sure to keep our excitement for other franchises in check next time.

I don't think they should. If you enjoy CoD or whatever, do continue. I'm still gonna call it shit though, and if you're bothered by what I think about things, you should probably learn to not be bothered. Also didn't mean to be derogatory towards americans specifically, had the list come from some other country I'd call their taste shit. Pretty sure my country buys crap in droves.

We should stop engaging in elitist nonsense? Yeah, SW was kinda made for that. I'm all for just hopping over to "games discussion" and leave this crap, but people would rather post here it seems.

whales be whaling, impossible for non mtx games to reach those numbers

This thread is US only. You're talking about worldwide. Apples and oranges. Elden Ring is top in the US.

F2P games are a whole different ball park... To put things into perspective, Genshin Impact made more money in a single year than what Minecraft made in ten years.

this is good advice. agree with it all.

on one hand this is the most immediately accessible fromsoft game with the lowest barrier to entry. the learning curve is far more gentle compared to others.

but that doesn't mean it stays that way. for me it got steeper as i progressed, and that was for two reasons - one i played it blind, which is how i've played the other games, but they were a fraction of the size and length.

and two, related to the first, the difficulty in souls games (in my opinion) is not the combat. mechanically combat (pve) is pretty simple, and largely just a numbers game. pay attention to your stats. if you get beat bad, you've either got your tactics all wrong or game is saying you're not ready for this yet, come back when you've levelled and / or with different gear.

the difficulty in fromsoft games is the opaque and obtuse game design and quest structure. very little is explicitly told (elden ring is the most generous in this sense by some distance). you pick up clues from item descriptions, cryptic npc conversations, environmental clues and connect the dots manually. that formula is challenging enough when you're roaming a small game world like a demon's souls. scale it up to god knows how much bigger elden ring is and, combined with playing blind, the likelihood of struggling to connect the dots, hitting brick walls and losing momentum grows significantly.

my advice for anyone whose struggled to get into these games previously is to play elden ring with a walkthrough to dip in and out of when needed. fightincowboy on youtube is the walkthrough guy you want, been watching a lot of his stuff in my second run and learnt a lot. guy knows his onions

@Jag85: It’s counting digital sales for Elden Ring and not for Pokémon. Pokémon sold way more copies in the US.

@mesome713: You don't know that. You're just guessing.

@Jag85: So are they, they don’t know the digital sales for Pokémon but they do for Elden Ring.

A more accurate title would be, we think Elden Ring is best seller. But most likely Pokémon is due to the unknown.

Elden Ring deserves it, glad to see RE 8 doing well too.

Elden Ring will decapitate BOTW2 in every way imaginable. Nintendo is already sweating in advance.

@Litchie: Swap Madden 22 with FIFA 22 for the #3 spot and place something else in the vacant #8 spot and I guarantee you have Europe's top 10 best selling games of the last 12 months...

@Mozelleple112: Lol. North America and Europe have similar tastes for the most part, with some key differences. The biggest difference is that FIFA would rank higher than COD, while Madden wouldn't be anywhere close to the top 10.

@mesome713: Again, we can't really say either way. In terms of the data the NPD actually have available to them, Elden Ring is tops. For whatever reasons, Nintendo refuses to share digital sales data with the NPD.