Sales analysis firm Circana has released its gaming industry sales data for May 2025, and FromSoftware and Bandai Namco will have cause to celebrate this month.
According to Circana’s Mat Piscatella, Elden Ring Nightreign was the best-selling game across all formats in May, and it topped the individual PlayStation and Xbox charts as well. As a reminder, I awarded the game an 8 out of 10 score, so I’m pretty pleased it managed to sell as well as it did.
Of course, given that sales topped 3.5 million just a few days after the game was released, it’s not surprising that Nightreign performed as well as it did. Still, since the game is an experiment on FromSoftware and Bandai Namco’s behalf, it will no doubt come as a pleasant surprise for both studios.
May’s second best-selling game across all formats was Doom: The Dark Ages, which, considering that the game was released on Game Pass on day one, is pretty impressive. As a reminder, Bethesda announced shortly after launch that Doom: The Dark Ages had hit three million players, although since that number includes Game Pass players, it’s perhaps not quite as valuable as the studio thinks.
Neither of these games have managed to topple Monster Hunter Wilds or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered as the best-selling games of 2025 year-to-date. Incidentally, Forza Horizon 5 is in third place, largely because of its release on PS5 in late April.
As ever, Nintendo’s chart is off in its own little world, since many of the aforementioned games weren’t released for the Switch. That platform’s best-selling game for May was Mario Kart 8, because of course it was, followed by Capcom Fighting Collection 2.
As ever, Piscatella’s full thread is well worth a look. It’s got plenty of stats on things like hardware sales and the mobile market as well, so be sure to give it a glance if you’re into your numbers.
