Elden Ring Does Not Come Close to Being the Most Played Game of the Year. For all its popularity, the Elden Ring is not close to being the most-played game of the year and is unlikely to clinch the title by the time 2022 comes to an end.
That is according to Mat Piscatella, the executive director and video game industry advisor at market research firm NPD. Elden Ring’s commercial popularity was brought into stark comparison when piscatella shared a list of the top most-played games in the United States during the first quarter of this year on Twitter.
Elden Ring Does Not Come Close to Being the Most Played Game of the Year
The list comes with several mammoth titles that have been dominating the gaming industry since their releases, such as Minecraft, GTA 5, and Fortnite. Alongside them are some massive franchise and household names, which includes Call of Duty: Vanguard, Warzone, the Sims 4, and Among Us.
A couple of sports games also made it into the top 10 – NBA 2K22 and Madden NFL 22 – alongside animal crossing: New Horizons. As piscatella highlights, half of the 10 most played of the year so far were not released this decade, and Elden Ring happens to not be among them.
Elden ring has been reportedly ranked among the 20th in the list, behind multiplayer games like the world of warcraft and rocket league, as well as other major single-player titles that include Skyrim. Piscatella’s list does not exactly include absolute figures of the game’s estimated player counts, nor does it disclose the sample size that was used to build up the findings.
Do Not be Surprised
Elden ring might have sold over 13 million copies, mesmerized critics, and taken the world by storm, but it’s hardly surprising that it is yet to clinch a top spot in the most-played games list. It did not only release as recently as February this year but the highest-performing titles are those that are able to cement themselves in the gaming zeitgeist while reaching across audiences.
“the big evergreen games, and the big live-service games with deeply embedded social hooks, are gravity wells for player attention, time, and spending,” Piscatella says. “New games big and small a daunting challenge trying to breakthrough.”
Even though Elden Ring’s standing might boost up before the year runs out, it is unlike to break into the top ten. As a primarily single-player game rated for mostly mature audiences, it would never have the cross-the-cross-audience appeal that Fortnite or Among us enjoy. And while its invasion mechanic is a novel approach to social gaming, the absence of live-service elements is capable of regularly drawing back players through seasons of new content means its highest sales period has been and gone.
Unexpected Game Entries
However, there were a few unexpected entries on the list. Call of duty: Vanguard still got into the top 10 despite Activision previously expressing its disappointment with the game’s sales figures, which went down by about 36.1% on 2020’s call of duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons also is fairly astonishing. Although a beloved series that resonates with people that are not usually lumped into broader gaming culture, new Horizons was released over two years ago. That it’s still able to command such a high player count says a lot about the attraction of social simulation games, as well as the commercial boost it received during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Well, this list only entails the most played games in the united states.
