UPDATE: Elden Ring’s total recent sales of 28.6 million are higher than the total sales of the Dark Souls series prior to Elden Ring’s launch in 2022. Total sales of Dark Souls games will boost within two years.
ORIGINAL STORY: FromSoftware titan Elden Ring has already overtaken the entire Dark Souls series thanks to a sales surge seemingly driven by the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, though that’s still ahead of the release of Elden Ring spin-off Nightreign next year.
Elden Ring Publisher Bandai Namco announced that the open-world RPG has now sold 28.6 million copies, an boost of 3.6 million from the 25 million revealed in June. And as @ZhugeEX pointed out he X/Twitterthis means that sales of the Dark Souls series have exceeded 27 million copies.
FromSoftware released Elden Ring in February 2022, which means it has achieved an impressive 28.6 million sales in two years and ten months. Meanwhile, Dark Souls came out in 2011, and the follow-ups Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 followed in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
Elden Ring obviously benefited from lessons learned from the beloved Dark Souls series, and also marked FromSoftware’s first foray into a more accessible open world formula. For example, players struggling with a challenging boss could walk away and spend their time on weaker enemies, giving Elden Ring a more mainstream appeal.
The franchise is also growing, as FromSoftware has just announced the co-op spin-off Elden Ring Nightreign, where up to three players are dropped into a shortened version of Limgrave from the main Elden Ring and are simply tasked with surviving. Enemies and structures are procedurally generated to provide a varied experience, and players are encouraged to fight to become stronger and survive the night when the boss appears.
After surviving three days and nights, a main boss appears for players to defeat, and there are a total of eight to defeat in the game. IGN has already played the game, and you can read our impressions here. Be sure to read our in-depth interview with Elden Ring Nightreign game director for even more in-depth information.
Elden Ring Nightreign may even improve upon the Dark Souls series itself, as it has already been confirmed to feature bosses from the iconic series and potentially other FromSoftware titles.
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter for IGN. He will talk about The Witcher all day long.
