Elden Ring is a massive critical, commercial, and popular success, selling more copies faster than any other FromSoftware game before it. And FromSoftware made Dark Souls. All of the Dark Souls games, in fact. Suffice it to say that Elden Ring is doing really, really well. With all this success comes questions about what's coming next. Is there a sequel? A movie? DLC? Something? FromSoftware has big plans for Elden Ring, make no mistake, so in this article, we'll tell you if Elden Ring is to become a franchise and if a sequel's confirmed.
How Successful Is Elden Ring?
As of March 15th, 2022, Elden Ring has sold over 12 million copies. For reference, Dark Souls 3 came out in 2016 and didn't sell even 10 million copies until 2020. In just a couple of weeks Elden Ring has outsold the last Dark Souls game. There are staggering, almost unbelievable numbers for a studio that's made beloved game after beloved game but never really had a massive financial success like this.
FromSoftware games are beloved, no doubt, but their critical success is not usually reflected by the sales of the actual games. They sell well, of course, but FromSoftware games are traditionally brutal, unforgiving, and fairly hardcore games as far as a casual gamer goes. Accordingly, their games tend to appeal to a less-than-massive audience.
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This seems to be changing with Elden Ring, though. Maybe the Souls games have been out for long enough now that their gameplay loops don't seem so intimidating to gamers who were once too afraid to even try, or maybe Elden Ring is just that much better of a game. It's hard to say, but the game's numbers speak for themselves.
Plus, sales thus far are just the game's release window sales. Yes, most of the game's sales will happen during that window, but as the years go on, doubtlessly many more millions of copies will sell. Elden Ring is inevitably going to sit atop the FromSoftware success pyramid for many years to come.
Because of all this success, though, Elden Ring isn't just a game anymore, it's an IP, something to expand beyond just itself as a game, according to FromSoftware.
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Elden Ring as an IP: Possible Sequels?
In the wake of all these sales, FromSoftware and Namco Bandai execs have commented on the game's success. Naturally, it's PR speak without that much in the way of official announcements or real-world details, but these comments very much so set the tone for the future of Elden Ring as a franchise.
FromSoftware plans to 'expand the brand of Elden Ring beyond the game itself and make it a part of daily life' and assures players that the universe of Elden Ring has more in store to come. In part, these comments are likely being made because FromSoftware has a reputation for making a game, releasing it, and moving on, regardless of its popularity.
Fans have been craving more Bloodborne for years, and some are still on the forever-wait Sekiro DLC. FromSoftware likes to make games, and then make more games, and as a studio, they've less experience expanding their games into a larger franchise than they do making one-offs.
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This isn't an official greenlight for a sequel, but it's more like FromSoftware signaling early on that they don't plan to just immediately begin work on the next project and leave Elden Ring to its own devices. What does that mean, specifically? That's unclear but is clear more is coming.
Will Elden Ring Get DLC or a Sequel?
Elden Ring has not been confirmed to be getting a sequel or even DLC. No official word yet. FromSoftware, of course, has made sequels in the past in the way of Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3, but outside of these games, the studio hasn't made a sequel since the last Armored Core game in 2012 a decade ago.
FromSoftware does somewhat regularly release DLC for their games, but this tendency has also slowed down in recent years. The last DLC FromSoftware released was Dark Souls 3's The Ringed City back in 2017, 5 years ago now, so it has been a while.
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Plus, Elden Ring is an open-world game, which everybody knows, but that also means that it's harder to develop a good DLC package for the game when it's not a linear series of levels players can explore through. That format, the one of the Souls games, made DLC a pretty reasonable thing to support those games with after release.
Sekiro isn't an open-world game, but it's more of a linear action-adventure game with a more traditional story than it is a Souls game, which also makes it less of a perfect fit for DLC after the fact. But, of course, Sekiro wasn't nearly as successful as Elden Ring.
All of this is to say that DLC for Elden Ring doesn't seem all that likely, while possible, but given the Dark Souls level of success Elden Ring is enjoying, a new game set in the Elden Ring universe would likely make a ton of financial sense for a studio that's been making amazing games for over a decade but hasn't hit the big times until now.
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However, if anything can be said about FromSoftware it's that the studio forges its own path. This developer doesn't make what's popular or ever tries to chase trends in order to demonstrate infinite growth to shareholders. FromSoftware develops games the people at FromSoftware want to make, and that next game might be Elden Ring 2, and it might not.
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