'Elden Ring' Has Managed To Outsell Call Of Duty

You know, when Elden Ring first released and was hit with a raft of 10/10 reviews (including our own) I fairly confidently said that the game of the year had already been decided. Now, as more and more big titles are just exiting the 2022 schedule altogether (see you next year, Starfield and Zelda), it seems to be getting increasingly more likely that FromSoftware have got this one in the bag.

Even though we’re almost three months on from its release, it’s still quite hard to go anywhere online without seeing someone talking about FromSoftware’s latest, and it’s no wonder - last week, it was reported that as of the end of March, the brutal open-world titan had sold an impressive 13.4 million copies, almost half of the combined sales of the entire Dark Souls franchise. Now, as reported by Kotaku, it’s even managed to outsell the most recent Call of Duty game.

Players have been finding all sorts of ways to play Elden Ring in ways that definitely weren't intended by the developers, like using dance mats as controllers. Yes, really - take a look below.

Recent data from NPD shows that Elden Ring is the best selling game of the year so far, taking both digital and physical sales into account. Currently, it’s followed by LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and Horizon Forbidden West, while Activision’s 2021 release, Call of Duty: Vanguard, is trailing behind, currently in seventh place on the list.

Admittedly, putting Elden Ring’s figures up against Vanguard’s might not offer the greatest comparison in the world. When the latter first came out, it was reported that it’d had the Call of Duty franchise’s worst launch in 14 years, and Activision later revealed that it hadn't met expectations at all, admitting that not enough was done to innovate the latest instalment. 

“While Call of Duty remains one of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time, our 2021 premium release didn’t meet our expectations, we believe primarily due to our own execution,” Activision Blizzard wrote in its investor report at the end of April.

However, that’s not to say that Elden Ring isn’t doing exceptionally well - by the end of March, it had managed to sell three times more copies than Bandai Namco had anticipated. Not too shabby at all. The rate at which people are buying it doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all, either, so no doubt it’ll be giving more huge titles a run for their money, too.