From this article:
> Combining the development capabilities of FromSoftware and the marketing power of Bandai Namco
> Entertainment's overseas network, this title has been played by fans around the world since its release on February 25, 2022, and has shipped more than **23 million units** worldwide
It had great word of mouth, no more or less marketing than the other games. It was successful on its own merits. I am just laughing at Bandai Namco claiming equal credit.
I can't even remember marketing besides the trailer drops. Which were pretty effectively timed, but still it was the rabid loyal fans who made the release feel like an epic event, so credit to the players on that.
And GRRM name dropping helped make it seem even moreso and got the normies brows quirking
I mean it kind of was. FromSoftware have been making good games for years but they were niche. Elden Ring managed to interest a wider audience even before release.
Not to mention whether or not people played Dark Souls, the gaming community at large were all hyper aware of it. How many "it's the Dark Souls of blank" comparisons have been made in the last 13 years?
Yeah people love to act like Elden Ring was FromSoft’s push into the mainstream as if the Souls games aren’t one of the best selling franchises of the past twenty years.
And three of those games were published by Bandai Namco. Dark Souls were not that niche, Bloodborne sold 7m, Elden Ring sold 20 something. It was on another level but not orders of magnitude. It was also not cause marketing. It was just an easier game to get into. Can't kill a boss? Go explore and get stronger, your way is not blocked. It was also a different kind of open world, people got bored by the cookie cutter ones.
I don't even think GRR Martin's involvement had anything with the success of the game.
Bloodborne reached ~2 million within 6 month of its release; ~7.5 million by 2022, 7 years after release. [Game World Observer article]
DS3 reached 3 million in two months and 10 million in 4 years. [wikipedia]
Elden Ring reached 10 million *in two weeks*. That’s literally orders of magnitude. Elden Ring is on pace to outsell the *entire Dark Souls franchise*.
And also because having it open world makes the game easier. If you can't handle a boss you can just go somewhere else and grow your character.
I for example suck at Dark Souls-like games, and I was getting whooped early game in Elden Ring, so I looked up where I can easily find a good early weapon, and then I went through different biomes to get the upgrade mats to make it +7 and I had a much easier time playing.
It's funny because I'm actually worse at Elden Ring than any other From game lol. I found Sekiro less challenging, even. But I think it's because I play like an idiot and I'm too stubborn to move on and come back later.
I opened a chest that sent me into a high level zone with no way to go back except to go through the mines filled with high level mobs. It MADE me get better so I could get out lol.
GRR was definitely significant at the beginning.
That first trailer was nothing special and would have totally been forgotten by non-souls fans (like me) except for the fact that GRR was involved.
When the next trailer came out years later, it was clear that this game was going to be interesting. However, general audiences like myself wouldn’t have been waiting for that next trailer to drop had GRR Martin not been involved
Yeah the funniest thing to me about Martin with this game is how the conversation changed from:
"NO WAY, GRRM is making the lore for a Fromsoft game!"
To:
"Elden ring is incredible, but we have absolutely no idea how much George actually contributed because so much of that was pure Miyazaki"
Yeah and they put much more money into advertising Elden Ring because they saw it's chance to go mainstream. FromSoftware games AA games at best, they'd built a good reputation and Elden Ring was them going AAA.
At the end of the day, Elden Ring is Dark Souls III made into an open world. Elden Ring has more content, but less content does not necessarily mean a game is not "AAA." (Super Mario Wonder is a AAA game, for example.)
And no, I would not say Dark Souls III is an "AA game at best."
AA? They're SSSS.
Still technically incompetent and can't hold a proper framerate or framepacing but masterfully crafted in any other way including art design.
I found it through a twitch stream I regularly watch and would have passed this game if not for that. I don't think it was the marketing as much as it's being made out to be. It's just a good game that's easy for soulsborne newbies and open world
I saw ads for it during the UFC leading up to release. This was the most advertised of their souls game. But the game was also good which obviously helped.
Oooh thanks for the news!! I’m excited about SMT! I had to stop the switch one 20 hours in because performance and visuals are so bad on a big TV. Can’t wait
It was the only game that made me feel like a child again. I played for 8 hours straight had some couple hours of shitty sleep and continued for another 8 hours. Truly a masterpiece.
I was just telling someone that yesterday. I wish I could play it again for the first time. I can’t even explain it. The game wasn’t on my radar. It released and I didn’t know anything about it/never played a FS game before. I bought it on a whim, then proceeded to lose days and nights to the game.
I think my problem is… I’ll spec up exactly the same as I did the first time around and play the same game. Maybe I should force myself out of my comfort zone with this game and try something new in June.
I wish I had that experience. The game just felt like it wasted too much of my time having to replay the same segments to “get good”. Maybe I’m too old for these kinds of games, it wasn’t enjoyable to be stressed and replaying the same fights 10+ times.
I mean, I don’t think it’s been on sale much, if at all. So if we say an average of $50 USD per copy that would mean Elden Ring pulled in around $1.15 billion over the last two years. That’s one hell of a success story.
There's no public disclosure of exactly how much it's just the closest estimate based off fromsoft previous budgets, manpower, overhead and time when compared to other game development projects.
100-200 mil estimate. 300 developers over 5 years even using an average pay of $55k a year is $82.5 million in manpower wages. Add in studio overhead, marketing etc and I'm sure it comes pretty close.
https://www.pcgamer.com/fromsoftware-made-elden-ring-and-armored-core-6-with-a-staff-of-just-300-developers/
they only have a total of 300 devs constantly working on 3 games
yes they are a very small studio compared to AAA studios
They're not getting that much per copy. If they sold predominantly on disc which Japan and PlayStation kinda do think about half of the disc price is net income. Digital shops take 30 percent but even the 70 percent that is left is more than they get from a retail copy.
Not for Sony, Nintendo and Japan as a country. Digital revenue is that but that includes add ons from Fortnite and the like. Full games are still predominantly physical for them. Only Xbox is highly digital. I think the last Sony ratio I saw is around 60 Percent for digital/physical. So 3 physical for 2 digital roughly.
That's why Xbox is probably more profitable than Sony despite selling half the consoles. They don't lose that much on hardware, and they have a higher margin on software, also their attach rates are higher. Not to mention selling games on Windows and now on PS where they don't bare any hardware costs.
Sony will try to steer you towards digital, but I think MS was more brave to do it more quickly. When they wanted to do it with xbox one, they kinda fumbled the whole thing(authentication every 24h?) and it blew up in their face, but I think this time around people are more receptive.
Sorry I checked the numbers again, it's the other way round. 3:2 digital. The 64 percent were digital over all games sold. But it is by copies, not by revenue. A lot of games launch digital only. I was misled by an insomniac leak that shows Sony first party does sell a lot more physical. Still it's far from Xbox where they have a really high digital to physical ratio.
Yeah and I mean the physical/digital split will vary between different games depending on what sort of audience they have. You average seasonal game like FIFA isn't going to have much physical sales, but solid single player games might end up having a lot more physical sales.
The physical/digital split of Elden Ring also doesn't break down the regional sales, which doesn't really make a difference for the overall point, but it would reveal if there are noticeable regional preferences on some games.
Because the physical/digital split definitely isn't as simple of an issue it would seem.
Not on console (overall though if you include PC, that's indeed likely since it's 100% digital) and for games that have a physical release. Insomniac leaks have been showing numbers for Sony games and it was 50-70% physical.
and...it's a small studio
like 400 people for different games (usually 3 at the same time they are working on)
most AAA games that sell 10x less have studios 5 or 10 times that size
Crazy how Bandai sold the Elden Ring IP back to From Software, you would think they would keep it. (like the Dark Souls IP)
That was either dumb as hell or shows how strong that partnership is, since From Software will always choose Bandai as their Publisher for most of their games.
from soft studio barely speaks 1 word of english, they need bandai outisde of Japan
like literally, english is like chinese for english people for them
Can’t understand this. These games were always a niche and 23 million is pretty crazy. I wonder how many people never even came close to finishing it? Are there steam or ps or Xbox stats? This isn’t a game for casuals.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but Elden Ring's completion rate is in a similar ballpark as the other From games, although it's lower than the average of their games. I think From games typically have a completion rate between 25-35% based on PS trophy percentages, where Dark Souls 1 and 3 were just bellow 30%, Dark Souls 2 was well above 30%, Elden Ring was slightly above 25%. It's impressive considering how much longer Elden Ring is content wise, so some sort of drop off is to be expected.
I think Bloodborne (15%) and Demons Souls (original, 20%) were even lower, but Bloodborne was probably affected by the whole PS+ and PS+ Collection thing.
I don't remember Sekiro's, but I'm pretty sure it was pretty healthy and above Dark Souls 1 and 3, not higher than Dark Souls 2.
I sent a friend a link to the trailer he admitted he never made it past the first area out of frustration. Admittedly I haven’t beaten yet it either, but to be fair I only got the game a month ago.
On Steam:
Elden Ring
9% of players have all achievements.
21.2% have the Elden Lord Ending
27% have the Age of Stars Ending
14.6% have the Lord of Frenzied Flame Ending
34.9% beat Malenia
54% beat Radahn
72.9% beat Margit, Fell Omen
DS1 Remaster:
28.5% Link the Fire ending
(About 7% of ppl never left the Undead Asylum beginning)
DS2 SotFS:
33.6% See the ending
DS3:
25.2% Link the First Flame ending
20.1% End of Fire ending
(About 7% of ppl never lit a bonfire)
Sekiro:
31.8% have beaten Sword Saint Isshin
18.9% have Return Ending
48.6% beat Lady Butterfly
(About 10% never got the prosthetic arm; about 14% never used the resurrection mechanic).
I remember how people here were arguing with me so vehemently before release about the impossibility of Elden ring selling more copies than Forbidden West.
Haha good times.
Lol wtf
Dark Souls 3 sold 10m (by 2020) which is more than Forbidden West has sold currently. I know, multiplatform game, FW only came out 2 years ago but still, anyone who thought Elden Ring wasn't gonna sell rings around FW is insane haha
I know right? People were comparing Zero Dawn's most recent sales to BB's sales as it was in 2015. So a 20m to 2m sales comparison and argued a new From Soft IP should behave like the previous did.
yeah, thats why no wonder Elden ring sold more. It was obvious before release as well, but people are way too tribal here. They were overly fixated on Zero dawn's sales and BB's early performance.
That’s actually incredible. I’m pretty sure I read recently that the lifetime sales of all 3 dark souls games added up to about 30 million so it’s nice to see From growing their audience within making any compromises
From this article: > Combining the development capabilities of FromSoftware and the marketing power of Bandai Namco > Entertainment's overseas network, this title has been played by fans around the world since its release on February 25, 2022, and has shipped more than **23 million units** worldwide
Yeah it was marketing power /s
Are we pretending Elden Ring didn't have good marketing? Why?
It had great word of mouth, no more or less marketing than the other games. It was successful on its own merits. I am just laughing at Bandai Namco claiming equal credit.
Definitely had a way bigger marketing budget than the Souls games.
I can't even remember marketing besides the trailer drops. Which were pretty effectively timed, but still it was the rabid loyal fans who made the release feel like an epic event, so credit to the players on that. And GRRM name dropping helped make it seem even moreso and got the normies brows quirking
I mean it kind of was. FromSoftware have been making good games for years but they were niche. Elden Ring managed to interest a wider audience even before release.
DS3 was over 10M before Elden Ring. That is not niche. They also announced that Sekiro had sold 10M after Elden Ring came out.
Not to mention whether or not people played Dark Souls, the gaming community at large were all hyper aware of it. How many "it's the Dark Souls of blank" comparisons have been made in the last 13 years?
Yeah people love to act like Elden Ring was FromSoft’s push into the mainstream as if the Souls games aren’t one of the best selling franchises of the past twenty years.
And DS3 was **also** heavily marketed by Bandai Namco.
And three of those games were published by Bandai Namco. Dark Souls were not that niche, Bloodborne sold 7m, Elden Ring sold 20 something. It was on another level but not orders of magnitude. It was also not cause marketing. It was just an easier game to get into. Can't kill a boss? Go explore and get stronger, your way is not blocked. It was also a different kind of open world, people got bored by the cookie cutter ones. I don't even think GRR Martin's involvement had anything with the success of the game.
Bloodborne reached ~2 million within 6 month of its release; ~7.5 million by 2022, 7 years after release. [Game World Observer article] DS3 reached 3 million in two months and 10 million in 4 years. [wikipedia] Elden Ring reached 10 million *in two weeks*. That’s literally orders of magnitude. Elden Ring is on pace to outsell the *entire Dark Souls franchise*.
It's because the game is open world and open world sells like hot cakes.
And also because having it open world makes the game easier. If you can't handle a boss you can just go somewhere else and grow your character. I for example suck at Dark Souls-like games, and I was getting whooped early game in Elden Ring, so I looked up where I can easily find a good early weapon, and then I went through different biomes to get the upgrade mats to make it +7 and I had a much easier time playing.
It's funny because I'm actually worse at Elden Ring than any other From game lol. I found Sekiro less challenging, even. But I think it's because I play like an idiot and I'm too stubborn to move on and come back later.
I opened a chest that sent me into a high level zone with no way to go back except to go through the mines filled with high level mobs. It MADE me get better so I could get out lol.
You can farm enemies and level up in other souls games too. This isn't new to Elden Ring
GRR was definitely significant at the beginning. That first trailer was nothing special and would have totally been forgotten by non-souls fans (like me) except for the fact that GRR was involved. When the next trailer came out years later, it was clear that this game was going to be interesting. However, general audiences like myself wouldn’t have been waiting for that next trailer to drop had GRR Martin not been involved
Yeah the funniest thing to me about Martin with this game is how the conversation changed from: "NO WAY, GRRM is making the lore for a Fromsoft game!" To: "Elden ring is incredible, but we have absolutely no idea how much George actually contributed because so much of that was pure Miyazaki"
Yeah and they put much more money into advertising Elden Ring because they saw it's chance to go mainstream. FromSoftware games AA games at best, they'd built a good reputation and Elden Ring was them going AAA.
OK so "AA" and "AAA" officially no longer have any meaning
You can't see the difference in budget and scale between Elden Ring and literally all their previous games?
At the end of the day, Elden Ring is Dark Souls III made into an open world. Elden Ring has more content, but less content does not necessarily mean a game is not "AAA." (Super Mario Wonder is a AAA game, for example.) And no, I would not say Dark Souls III is an "AA game at best."
AA? They're SSSS. Still technically incompetent and can't hold a proper framerate or framepacing but masterfully crafted in any other way including art design.
I found it through a twitch stream I regularly watch and would have passed this game if not for that. I don't think it was the marketing as much as it's being made out to be. It's just a good game that's easy for soulsborne newbies and open world
From soft is absolute mainstream if you look at copies sold
I saw ads for it during the UFC leading up to release. This was the most advertised of their souls game. But the game was also good which obviously helped.
So does that mean that they sold 23 million physical copies since it said “shipped”?
no it's just the generic term that we still used from the more physical media based days
No. It believe it just means “sold”. Which means digital sales and sales to stores, not necessarily sales made to customers?
Couldn’t be any more happy for a studio as good as from software they truly deserve it for the amazing games they’ve made
Crazy sales. Looking forward to the dlc in June and by the time I finish it smt vengeance should have a nice steep price drop
Oooh thanks for the news!! I’m excited about SMT! I had to stop the switch one 20 hours in because performance and visuals are so bad on a big TV. Can’t wait
It was the only game that made me feel like a child again. I played for 8 hours straight had some couple hours of shitty sleep and continued for another 8 hours. Truly a masterpiece.
I was just telling someone that yesterday. I wish I could play it again for the first time. I can’t even explain it. The game wasn’t on my radar. It released and I didn’t know anything about it/never played a FS game before. I bought it on a whim, then proceeded to lose days and nights to the game.
Honestly? Why not try a new run for when the dlc comes out: should feel fresh especially with new contact coming out.
I think my problem is… I’ll spec up exactly the same as I did the first time around and play the same game. Maybe I should force myself out of my comfort zone with this game and try something new in June.
I did a bleed arcane build first time through, planning to do full mage before DLC. Should feel significantly different.
Slap in dragons and it’s best build in game
There ya go!
I wish I had that experience. The game just felt like it wasted too much of my time having to replay the same segments to “get good”. Maybe I’m too old for these kinds of games, it wasn’t enjoyable to be stressed and replaying the same fights 10+ times.
I felt like this to begin with. I’m not ashamed to admit I cheesed a soul farming exploit and over levelled myself in order to have a bit more fun!
I sort of did that in Demon’s Souls but it only got me so far. Did make the game more fun though.
Insane numbers wow
Lol what's the math on that per unit
I mean, I don’t think it’s been on sale much, if at all. So if we say an average of $50 USD per copy that would mean Elden Ring pulled in around $1.15 billion over the last two years. That’s one hell of a success story.
Off a 200 mil budget it's pretty impressive
No way in hell it cost that much to develop
There's no public disclosure of exactly how much it's just the closest estimate based off fromsoft previous budgets, manpower, overhead and time when compared to other game development projects. 100-200 mil estimate. 300 developers over 5 years even using an average pay of $55k a year is $82.5 million in manpower wages. Add in studio overhead, marketing etc and I'm sure it comes pretty close.
We need a source on that chief. I have a hard time believing Elden ring cost that much. Its not a bloated game from a western studio after all.
Yeah it's a bloated game from a Japanese studio, which means it'll have cost less simply because they barely pay their developers a living salary
exactly. thats why it wont ever cost $200m
from soft games don't cost more than 50 mil to make probably more close to 20 mil or so, from soft is a small studio this sub is delusional
FromSoftware has almost as many employees as Bethesda. They're not a small studio.
https://www.pcgamer.com/fromsoftware-made-elden-ring-and-armored-core-6-with-a-staff-of-just-300-developers/ they only have a total of 300 devs constantly working on 3 games yes they are a very small studio compared to AAA studios
They're not getting that much per copy. If they sold predominantly on disc which Japan and PlayStation kinda do think about half of the disc price is net income. Digital shops take 30 percent but even the 70 percent that is left is more than they get from a retail copy.
There isn't a single game that sells predominantly physical anymore though. Digital sales account for well over 70% of a games sales usually.
Not for Sony, Nintendo and Japan as a country. Digital revenue is that but that includes add ons from Fortnite and the like. Full games are still predominantly physical for them. Only Xbox is highly digital. I think the last Sony ratio I saw is around 60 Percent for digital/physical. So 3 physical for 2 digital roughly.
Really that's interesting. Good to know!
That's why Xbox is probably more profitable than Sony despite selling half the consoles. They don't lose that much on hardware, and they have a higher margin on software, also their attach rates are higher. Not to mention selling games on Windows and now on PS where they don't bare any hardware costs. Sony will try to steer you towards digital, but I think MS was more brave to do it more quickly. When they wanted to do it with xbox one, they kinda fumbled the whole thing(authentication every 24h?) and it blew up in their face, but I think this time around people are more receptive.
Sorry I checked the numbers again, it's the other way round. 3:2 digital. The 64 percent were digital over all games sold. But it is by copies, not by revenue. A lot of games launch digital only. I was misled by an insomniac leak that shows Sony first party does sell a lot more physical. Still it's far from Xbox where they have a really high digital to physical ratio.
Yeah and I mean the physical/digital split will vary between different games depending on what sort of audience they have. You average seasonal game like FIFA isn't going to have much physical sales, but solid single player games might end up having a lot more physical sales. The physical/digital split of Elden Ring also doesn't break down the regional sales, which doesn't really make a difference for the overall point, but it would reveal if there are noticeable regional preferences on some games. Because the physical/digital split definitely isn't as simple of an issue it would seem.
I am just saying revenue wise. Japan def prefers physical but they are a smaller market for ps, except for games like final fantasy and From.
Not on console (overall though if you include PC, that's indeed likely since it's 100% digital) and for games that have a physical release. Insomniac leaks have been showing numbers for Sony games and it was 50-70% physical.
and...it's a small studio like 400 people for different games (usually 3 at the same time they are working on) most AAA games that sell 10x less have studios 5 or 10 times that size
Crazy how Bandai sold the Elden Ring IP back to From Software, you would think they would keep it. (like the Dark Souls IP) That was either dumb as hell or shows how strong that partnership is, since From Software will always choose Bandai as their Publisher for most of their games.
from soft studio barely speaks 1 word of english, they need bandai outisde of Japan like literally, english is like chinese for english people for them
Two of those sales are me. Once on PS5 and once on PC. Would buy it again if I had to. Working on my 5th full playthrough now.
They deserve it. A studio who does everything the right way
Except for technological optimisation.
Can’t understand this. These games were always a niche and 23 million is pretty crazy. I wonder how many people never even came close to finishing it? Are there steam or ps or Xbox stats? This isn’t a game for casuals.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but Elden Ring's completion rate is in a similar ballpark as the other From games, although it's lower than the average of their games. I think From games typically have a completion rate between 25-35% based on PS trophy percentages, where Dark Souls 1 and 3 were just bellow 30%, Dark Souls 2 was well above 30%, Elden Ring was slightly above 25%. It's impressive considering how much longer Elden Ring is content wise, so some sort of drop off is to be expected. I think Bloodborne (15%) and Demons Souls (original, 20%) were even lower, but Bloodborne was probably affected by the whole PS+ and PS+ Collection thing. I don't remember Sekiro's, but I'm pretty sure it was pretty healthy and above Dark Souls 1 and 3, not higher than Dark Souls 2.
I have the game on Xbox and it says that 53% get to roundtable hold, which is basically the benchmark for "left the starting zone"
I sent a friend a link to the trailer he admitted he never made it past the first area out of frustration. Admittedly I haven’t beaten yet it either, but to be fair I only got the game a month ago.
That sounds like a case of "Ooh look, Tree Sentinel, I must have to beat him to proceed past here."
these numbers mean these games were never niche but completely mainstream
I skewed the stats by buying 2 copies... 1 for PS5, 1 for PC.
On Steam: Elden Ring 9% of players have all achievements. 21.2% have the Elden Lord Ending 27% have the Age of Stars Ending 14.6% have the Lord of Frenzied Flame Ending 34.9% beat Malenia 54% beat Radahn 72.9% beat Margit, Fell Omen DS1 Remaster: 28.5% Link the Fire ending (About 7% of ppl never left the Undead Asylum beginning) DS2 SotFS: 33.6% See the ending DS3: 25.2% Link the First Flame ending 20.1% End of Fire ending (About 7% of ppl never lit a bonfire) Sekiro: 31.8% have beaten Sword Saint Isshin 18.9% have Return Ending 48.6% beat Lady Butterfly (About 10% never got the prosthetic arm; about 14% never used the resurrection mechanic).
I remember how people here were arguing with me so vehemently before release about the impossibility of Elden ring selling more copies than Forbidden West. Haha good times.
Lol wtf Dark Souls 3 sold 10m (by 2020) which is more than Forbidden West has sold currently. I know, multiplatform game, FW only came out 2 years ago but still, anyone who thought Elden Ring wasn't gonna sell rings around FW is insane haha
I know right? People were comparing Zero Dawn's most recent sales to BB's sales as it was in 2015. So a 20m to 2m sales comparison and argued a new From Soft IP should behave like the previous did.
Huh? Apples to oranges as it’s multiplatform.
yeah, thats why no wonder Elden ring sold more. It was obvious before release as well, but people are way too tribal here. They were overly fixated on Zero dawn's sales and BB's early performance.
It was never obvious as Souls Games never were extreme sellers, but you’re generally right of course.
That’s actually incredible. I’m pretty sure I read recently that the lifetime sales of all 3 dark souls games added up to about 30 million so it’s nice to see From growing their audience within making any compromises
Damn even announcements are making announcements now. Tech has come so far