Update: NPD advisor Mat Piscatella has softened the report that Elden Ring is among the top 10 best-selling premium games in the US, citing "an incomplete comparable universe" born of limited physical and digital sales data.
"Because the ranked charts do not include the full history for all titles and all platforms - across both physical and digital sales - this note was worded too definitively for what is an incomplete comparable universe," he said in a new tweet. "I apologize for the lack of clarity in the note."
"If all versions across all products were projected for and/or included it would not be ranked top 10. It was too definitive a statement without the proper qualifiers," he added.
In other words, while Elden Ring is selling exceptionally well month over month, it seemingly has not reached the realm of the top 10 premium games in the US even only accounting for dollar sales. It's possible it will quite soon, but we can't tell that for from this report, which only leverages NPD's data set.
We've reached out to Bandai Namco to ask about current sales figures for the hit RPG.
Original story follows...
In under five months, Elden Ring has become one of the top 10 best-selling premium games of the US for dollar sales.
That's according to executive director and advisor Mat Piscatella of the NPD Group research firm, who recently shared some snapshots from the group's report targeting US games and hardware for June 2022.
Elden Ring's launch has been so explosive that it now "ranks among the top 10 best-selling premium games in the US market all-time" for dollar sales," Piscatella confirmed. The key qualifiers here are "dollar sales" and "premium games," as this narrows Elden Ring's competitors and focuses strictly on revenue over units shipped. In a follow-up tweet, Piscatella clarified that the "premium games" tracked must have an upfront purchase price and that this figure excludes microtransaction or post-launch revenue.
Piscatella and the NPD didn't specify where exactly it places – most likely at number 10 given its newness – but the fact that it's cracked these ranks at all speaks to its critical and consumer reception, word-of-mouth virality, and total dominance of this year's games discourse.
It's worth noting that this snippet is from NPD's June report, meaning Elden Ring would've reached this milestone well before today, July 15. Again, we don't have exact specifics here, but the speed of Elden Ring's rise boggles the mind.
It's also important to note that the best-selling games worldwide and in specific markets are commonly tracked by units shipped, putting monoliths like GTA 5, Minecraft, and Tetris (the original) at the top. We also see system-sellers, common pack-ins, and re-release targets like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Mario Kart 8 among the top 10 highest-sellers globally.
Last we heard, Elden Ring had shipped over 13 million copies in a little over a month, easily making it the best-selling game of developer FromSoftware to date. Where it places in overall copies sold remains to be seen.
The NPD Group has also confirmed that Elden Ring was the best-selling game of June for dollar sales, meaning it's been number one for four of the five months since its launch. It only dropped to second behind LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga for the month of April. Naturally, this also makes it the best-selling game of 2022 in the US – again, for dollar sales.
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