Armored Core 6 shakes off its niche status to become second-biggest FromSoft launch ever

FromSoftware has become a household name over the past decade, in large part due to its successful and massively influential Dark Souls series and its spinoffs, like Sekiro and Bloodborne. Their Armored Core series, on the other hand, has always been niche enough to be overlooked, but the triumphant launch of Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon has proven that the series has what it takes to break into the mainstream.

According to SteamDB, an independent website that tracks Steam metrics, AC6 hit a peak of 150,000 concurrent players within its first 24 hours of launch, which it surpassed the very next day with a peak of 156,000—and it looks on track to do so again. 

This puts it solidly above almost every FromSoft release to date—the sole exception is Elden Ring, which saw a first-day peak of almost a million players. That in itself isn’t surprising, as Elden Ring took the already proven Dark Souls formula and made it both larger and more forgiving to accommodate a much wider audience. Armored Core 6, on the other hand, is a tailored, linear experience from a series that hasn’t seen a new entry in more than a decade, making its performance both surprising and reassuring. 

Seeing the latest entry in an obscure, long-running series debut in the modern day to rave reviews and financial success is rare. Armored Core_, in particular, has never been a golden goose, with every game in the series finding cult appeal but little else as platform exclusivity and technical gameplay kept a wider audience away. AC6 takes the lessons learned by its predecessors and incorporates elements taken from FromSoft’s more recent titles, making for a game that feels like the perfect blend of old and new.

This all goes to show that FromSoft keeps going from strength to strength. Maybe they’ll bring back King’s Field next if they’re dead set on pulling from their back catalog—or maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally get that Bloodborne 2.