That’s a huge launch month.
Bandai Namco
It should come as no surprise that Elden Ring is a massive hit, given how it’s dominated conversations online since launch. But the scale of its success may surprise you, even if you’re one of the millions of people enjoying it.
Unsurprisingly, Demon’s Souls was FromSoftware’s slowest seller. An inscrutable game from an obscure developer launching on one console, it took more than two years to sell 1.5 million copies worldwide.
Thanks to the critical success of Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls surpassed its predecessor, selling 2 million copies in 17 months. Along with increased name recognition, it also benefitted from appearing on multiple consoles.
Dark Souls 2 quickly outpaced the original Dark Souls, selling 1 million copies in its first month in North America and Europe alone. In just over a year, it hit 2.5 million sales.
Despite launching on a single console, Bloodborne had solid sales off the bat. In the first month after launch, it sold 1 million copies and passed 2 million copies after six months.
Even without the Dark Souls name behind it, Sekiro had a great launch, selling 2 million copies in 10 days. The pace slowed after that, and Sekiro reached 5 million sales in 16 months.
The conclusion to the Dark Souls trilogy was Bandai Namco’s most successful launch ever, selling 3 million copies in one month after its worldwide release. It took four years to sell 10 million copies.
Breath of the Wild redefined open-world games and, more recently, inspired countless comparisons with Elden Ring. It sold nearly 4 million copies in its first month, a number which includes almost every Switch owner. Two years later, it hit 14.27 million sales.
As a third-person open-world fantasy RPG, The Witcher 3 is the closest comparison to Elden Ring. With 1.5 million pre-orders, it reached 4 million sales in its first two weeks. That number climbed to 6 million in six weeks, and hit 30 million after six years.
Open-world behemoth Skyrim sold 3.4 million physical copies in its first two days. Within a month, it shipped 10 million copies to retailers (which doesn’t necessarily mean they all sold that quickly). Two years after launch, it reached 20 million sales, and within five years it sold 30 million copies.
That brings us to Elden Ring. Just 18 days after release, it sold 12 million copies worldwide. That’s 2 million more than FromSoftware’s next-best seller, Dark Souls 3, sold in four years. Elden Ring had the best debut month of any game since Call of Duty: Vanguard launched in November 2021.
You may remember Cyberpunk 2077 from its disastrously buggy launch, but its sorry state wasn’t reflected in sales. In its first 10 days, it sold 13 million copies worldwide, including 8 million pre-orders.
As big as Elden Ring’s launch was, there’s just no beating Rockstar. The wildly anticipated Red Dead Redemption 2 hit 17 million sales in just two weeks, more than the first Red Dead Redemption ever sold. By the end of 2021, three years after launch, it shipped 43 million copies.
Finally, the unbeatable GTA V. Selling more than 11 million copies in its first day, GTA V shipped 29 million copies in six weeks. In eight years, it’s shipped 160 million copies worldwide, with a huge uptick in sales in 2020.