Shadow of the Erdtree put Elden Ring back on top | Circana June 2024

Elden Ring has once again shot to the top of the sales charts two years after it launched, according to industry-tracking firm Circana. Unlike last month’s Ghost of Tsushima, which picked up thanks to a PC Director’s Cut rerelease, Elden Ring got a boost in June due to the launch of its massive expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, on June 21.

Unfortunately, the overall sales charts haven’t seen a similar second wind. Sales of all other titles are down from June 2023.

“Projected U.S. spending on video game hardware, content and accessories totaled $4.6 billion in June 2024, falling 5% when compared to a year ago. First half spending grew 1% compared to the first half of 2023, reaching $27.3 billion,” said Mat Piscatella, Circana’s executive producer for games reports. “Content spending dropped 2% in June when compared to the same month last year, to $4.1 billion.”

In what’s becoming a trend for 2024, hardware sales are down by a significant percent — 37% is not as bad as last month’s 40%, but not by a large amount. Piscatella added, “PlayStation 5 again led the month’s hardware market in unit and dollar sales. Nintendo Switch once again finished second in unit sales, while Xbox Series ranked second in dollars. These same rankings were reflected across 2024’s total first half.”

This is now the second month in a row that top line spending on video games fell across all categories. The year-to-date chart shows that 2024 so far is only 1% ahead of the mid-year sales numbers in 2023.

Circana June 2024: Top 20 best-selling games in the U.S.

While this is the first time Elden Ring has been at the top of Circana’s monthly charts since May 2022, the game has never actually dropped off of the best-seller list. In fact, the game has been slowly creeping back up the ranks in the last few months, likely due to Shadow of the Erdtree’s much-anticipated launch. In May, it went from 19th place to 8th.

The two “new” games from June that made it onto the charts were the Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD remaster, and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, an expanded re-release. Admittedly June didn’t see many truly new game releases — one of the only titles to launch that wasn’t an expansion, remake or remaster was Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

Which games have jumped up the charts?

Speaking of expansions and re-releases, two other games made massive leaps up the sales charts in June: namely, Kingdom Hearts: Integrum Masterpiece and The Elder Scrolls Online. Integrum Masterpiece is the complete (or as complete as is possible) collection of the Kingdom Hearts games released up to this point, comprising 1.5 + 2.5 Remix, 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue and 3 + the Re Mind DLC. It originally launched on Switch via cloud in February 2022, but released on Steam on June 13, which is likely why it’s so far up the list. It’s also available to play on Steam Deck.

The Elder Scrolls Online likely received a boost from the launch of the Gold Road DLC release, which brought back familiar locations from the fourth game, Oblivion.

Another game that jumped the list was Street Fighter 6, which went from 72nd place to 20th in June. Capcom not only launched and announced fan favorite Street Fighter characters — such as Akuma and M. Bison — around this time, but it also offered favorable sale prices for SF6 in June.

Circana June 2024: 20 best-selling games of 2024 so far

Elden Ring’s place on the year-to-date list also benefited from Shadow of the Erdtree, as it went from 20th place to fifteh in the span of one month. Other than this, the list has remained relatively unchanged — Helldivers II is still winning 2024 so far, even over Modern Warfare 3. There’s a chance this may change as more franchises (including Call of Duty) launch titles later in the year.