Bandai Namco Holdings has released a financial report for the company’s first quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023 (April 2022 to June 2022), which reveals a strong increase in overall profits. Alongside this increase, the report also reveals the number of Elden Ring copies shipped until last June, which amounts to 16.6 million copies worldwide.
According to the report, Bandai Namco’s video game software sales have seen an increase of 13.7% over the past year, although new major titles have since been released. This was said to be thanks to the release of ‘Elden Ring’ in the previous fiscal year, which has caused the overall sales of the company to go up by 34.1%. It is also mentioned that reported sales of previous years appear to have a higher profit margin than new titles as development costs were recorded in the previous period or earlier, unlike new sales numbers which don’t include them yet.
Elden Ring has been a strong contender in terms of sales for some time now, and has achieved a staggering number of 13.4 million copies in its first three months. The game currently has a Metacritic score of 96, making it one of the highest-rated games of all time, not to mention it had more than 750,000 active concurrent players on Steam within the first 24 hours of its release, which was an unprecedented number for a FromSoftware title.
Elden Ring has established itself as a new strong IP for Bandai Namco, and the company is already aware of its significance. Bandai’s president Yasuo Miyakawa has recently stated in a press release he has plans to expand on the IP beyond games so the characters and the world can reach various fields and mediums, not just gamers. According to Mr Yasuo, Elden Ring had a long development time as the team wanted to deliver a work that exceeds the expectations of fans all over the world, and a work that can accompany them in their daily life, not just only in games.
There has also been plenty of rumors as of late, stating that an Elden Ring DLC was in the works. A recent leak suggested that the expansion would be titled ‘Barbarians of Badlands’, but the leak was more than likely fake. But, as Elden Ring has become one of the biggest titles of 2022, expanding on that universe should be a no-brainer for Bandai Namco.