In news that may come as a surprise to some gamers, Elden Ring hasn’t even scratched the top ten most played games of Q1 2022 in the USA. As reported in Exputer, that’s according to new information gathered by The NPD Group, which has compiled a list of the most played games in the USA, according to NPD’s PlayerPulse.
Although Elden Ring has been a commercial smash since its release back in February, it hasn’t made it into the list in as high a position as some might have perhaps expected. Instead, it’s sitting at number 20 in the rankings, with games such as Minecraft, The Sims 4 and even Skyrim coming in higher than the FromSoftware giant.
According to a tweet shared today by The NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella, many of the games that beat Elden Ring aren’t even from the last ten years, which speaks to their longevity to be honest, even if the figures are a bit surprising.
However, there are plenty of factors to explain the game’s absence from the top ten. Firstly, the game was only released at the back end of February. Also, while it has enjoyed huge sales figures so far, there will still be a large chunk of the gaming community who perhaps haven’t been able to play it yet due to its price point (in these challenging financial times, not everyone has a spare £50-60 to splash out on a new game right now). So it might be that a significant audience of players are waiting until the game makes its debut on one of the subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass. In addition, the game’s notable level of challenge may be another reason why it’s not being played as often as other, less taxing titles.
Whatever the reason, it may be that by Q2 or Q3, things look a bit different in terms of rankings. It’ll be interesting to see if the data changes, given Elden Ring’s popularity.
