What comes next for the Japanese developer following the tremendous success of Elden Ring in 2022? Will Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon live up to the hype? Could Elden Ring become the next video game transmedia phenomenon?
If you’re anything like me, you spent much of last year “maidenless”, wandering the Lands Between in FromSoftware’s Game of the Year, Elden Ring, and dying over… and over… and over.
First released in late February 2022, Elden Ring proved to be a smash hit for the Japanese game maker, selling more than 17.5 million units in less than a year from launch. Media conglomerate Kadokawa (the majority shareholder of FromSoftware) saw its fiscal Q3 (October to December) net sales in its Games segment increase 123% year-over-year on the strength of Elden Ring’s performance. FromSoftware, known for little else beyond its Dark Souls action RPGs, suddenly felt like a household name in gaming.
Much has already been written about the surprising nature of Elden Ring’s breakthrough success, given FromSoftware’s penchant for creating punishingly difficult games that cater to more of a niche audience. Elden Ring provided the company with a level of global scale and mainstream popularity that is incredibly difficult to replicate, while at the same time proving there was still a healthy appetite for polished, (mostly) single-player experiences in an era dominated by live service and free-to-play gaming.
Now that the company is nearly a full year removed from Elden Ring’s stratospheric launch, the question becomes: how will FromSoftware sustain (or improve upon) this newfound level of success?
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The snippet above is a preview of an article initially published on February 16, 2023 for Naavik Digest, an excellent newsletter and source of games industry analysis where you can read more of my writing, along with that of a host of other incredibly talented contributors.
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