Update 05/13/2022: Elden Ring has overtaken sales of Call of Duty: Vanguard in the US, making it the best-selling game of the last 12 months in the country.
Per sales figures collected by the NPD Group for April 2022, Elden Ring was the second best-selling game of the month (trailing LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga), and remains the best-selling game of 2022 so far. However, its extra sales pushed it over the mark set by CoD: Vanguard.
It's an enormous achievement, with CoD games invariably among the US' best-selling games of the year, almost every year, since 2009's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Elden Ring has also passed Vanguard's sales despite the latter having been on sale for three months longer.
A little confusingly, the game that could topple Elden Ring in 2022 is also called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This year's CoD is a sequel to the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot – and is likely being made in part because its predecessor was one of the best-selling games in the series.
Elden Ring is officially the United States' best-selling game of 2022 so far, with a huge launch according to the latest NPD data.
FromSoftware's latest is the second best launch of the last twelve months, falling short of only Call of Duty: Vanguard. That means its sales in February performed better than Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, and the other best games of 2021.
Elden Ring is also already the fifth best selling game of the past twelve months, despite only being released two weeks ago on February 25.
PlayStation players still favoured their latest exclusive, Horizon: Forbidden West, as Elden Ring placed second on Sony consoles.
It still secured the top spot on Xbox, however, and on Steam, where it grew in popularity day by day on its first weekend before becoming the sixth most played game of all time on the platform.
Elden Ring has proven somewhat of a cultural phenomenon, with crazy adverts, a streamer's Twitch chat playing while he swept, someone using the Nintendo Switch's Ring Fit Controller to beat a boss, and it's even got its own candy.
In our 10/10 review, IGN said: "Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path."
To make those choices with the best available information, check out our guide that features everything you could ever hope to know about Elden Ring, including collectible locations, boss strategies, and more.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.
