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The Dark Souls franchise has sold over 27 million units, claims From Software

Bandai Namco and From Software took a victory lap, adding that Dark Souls 3 has accounted for over a third of the overall franchise sales.

TJ Denzer

May 19, 2020 9:12 AM

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There is little doubt that From Software’s Dark Souls/Demon Souls series has become one of the most iconic action adventure franchises in modern gaming history. Whether you know the game from its trademark difficulty, tricky and strategic PvP and PvE systems, speedrunning communities, or any number of mods and community-created goodies centered around the game, Dark Souls has assuredly made its mark on gaming history. That has recently led to From Software celebrating that the franchise just crossed 27 million units sold overall.

From Software took the opportunity to announce the Dark Souls 27 million unit sales milestone via the developer's Twitter on May 19, 2020. Since Demon Souls was first launched in 2009, the franchise has been through a lot. From a relative community division over Dark Souls 2, to a wildly successful launch of Dark Souls 3, up to an interesting relaunch of Dark Souls 1, From Software’s gothic medieval fantasy franchise has been a constant talking of conversation alongside video games across the past decade. Like it or hate it, “the Dark Souls of” anything is pretty much synonymous with a hardcore approach.

The DARK SOULS series has sold over 27 million units to date. We are incredibly grateful to every single one of our players. This success is owed to you.
We hope you continue to enjoy our games, and look forward to Elden Ring, the new Action RPG that's currently in development. pic.twitter.com/697rctd7wZ

— FROMSOFTWARE (@fromsoftware_pr) May 19, 2020

As an aside, Bandai Namco also revealed that Dark Souls 3 had crossed over 10 million units sold since its launch in 2016, meaning it accounts for more than a third of the Dark Souls/Demon Souls franchise. This also makes sense given its solid environments, refined combat and PvP systems, and other factors that truly make it arguably one of the most enjoyable entries of the bunch, demonstrated by the fact that it had already sold 3 million units just a couple months after its worldwide launch. The franchise has only been aided further by a fairly good DLC collection for Dark Souls 3 and a remaster of the original Dark Souls, allowing latecomers a solid entry point into the iconic game.

We’re still anxiously awaiting details on From Software’s upcoming Elden Ring, but a major kudos is due to the developer for the milestone. Dark Souls is still one of the most iconic games to kill players over and over again and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.