February was a juggernaut of a month for game with four of the top five games in NPD’s February Report coming from games released last month. Elden Ring managed to live up to the hype and scored huge mainstream appeal for From Software as it notches the #1 spot.
According to NPD’s Mat Piscatella, Elden Ring sales were huge as it scored the #1 spot on Steam and Xbox platforms in February, while Horizon: Forbidden West managed to grab the top spot on PlayStation (Elden Ring was second).
Piscatella also said all the big February releases did well, and we can see that on the chart with Dying Light 2: Stay Human and Total War: Warhammer III coming in at #4 and #5.
Total War: Warhammer III continues to show that even with a game launching day one on Xbox Game Pass, it can still have a strong retail showing.
Elden Ring had an insane amount of buzz leading up to launch, and From Software finally has a mainstream hit on its hands. Before Elden Ring, Dark Souls III was From’s biggest release as it hit an all-time user peak concurrent of 129,831 on Steam. That’s a big number, but Elden Ring crushed it with 952,523 peak users. And it’s holding up exceptionally well with 730,000+ peak users in the past 24 hours.
It deserves every single one of them too. The game’s not perfect (technical issues and co-op clunkiness aside), but it’s such a fantastic open-world game that doesn’t hold your hand. It reminds me of the first few weeks of playing Morrowind on Xbox back in the day. Just toss you into the world and let you play and figure stuff out on your own.
I’m curious to see how open-world game design might shift in the next few years. From Software is always known for its punishing difficulty on their games, but Elden Ring shows they have struck a chord with open-world design too. Elden Ring invites us to explore the world from the first moment, but more importantly, it rewards you for doing so.
Here’s a roundup of the top 10 games in February according to NPD:
- Elden Ring
- Horizon II: Forbidden West
- Pokemon Legends: Arceus
- Dying Light 2: Stay Human
- Total War: Warhammer III
- Call of Duty: Vanguard
- Madden NFL 22
- Mario Kart 8
- FIFA 22
- Minecraft