With more than half of 2022 already behind us, experts and analysts are starting to draw the first conclusions about what the final results of the gaming industry and its games will be at the end of the year. The NPD Group company, which specializes mainly in the US gaming market, participates in the forecasts.
And NPD is sure of it: when 2022 ends, Elden Ring will be the best-selling game in the US, surpassing even Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which is scheduled for release on PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles on October 28th. Even though the two games are eight months apart (From Software debuted on February 25), it should be noted that the Call of Duty brand has always been very strong in the US, dominating the annual sales charts despite the fact that games usually released in the last months of each year.
Therefore, Hidetaka Miyazaki’s latest work will be another major success in a territory where only two times the COD series has not taken the podium: in 2013, when it was surpassed by GTA 5, and in 2018, when Red Dead Redemption 2 overtook it. Thus , at the end of 2022 we will know if a third exception will be made. In any case, NPD expects other major titles such as God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Gotham Knights, and Pokémon games (Legends and Scarlet and Violet) to be in the final top 10 best-selling games.
It should be kept in mind that Elden Ring sold over 13 million copies in its first month of sales alone, and that figure could increase even more in the following weeks, making the possibility of it becoming number one on stellar ground highly plausible. Finally, among other NPD predictions, the Nintendo Switch will become the best-selling console in the US, with total gaming spending of around $55.5 billion, down 8.7% from 2021.
