Video Game Market Report
Video game analyst group Circana has released its November 2023 U.S. Video Game Market Highlights report and in it, the company reveals that, unsurprisingly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was the best-selling game of the month. It launched on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on November 10 and is already the second best-selling game of 2023, behind Hogwarts Legacy.
The annual Call of Duty game always sells extremely well – it has taken the top spot of November for five years straight – so today’s results are no surprise. However, what’s new this time around is that Modern Warfare III is now an Xbox-owned game, after Microsoft successfully completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a colossal $69 billion. Also, notably, despite Modern Warfare III reviewing poorly – it has a 56 on Metacritic, the lowest of the rebooted Modern Warfare series, and received a 5 out of 10 from Game Informer – it’s still selling very well, per usual.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was the best-selling game of November, instantly becoming the 2nd best-selling game of 2023 year-to-date. It is the 5th consecutive year that a Call of Duty title was November’s best-seller (Red Dead Redemption II ranked 1st in Nov 2018).
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) December 13, 2023
However, on both PlayStation and Xbox, it was the second most-played game of the month, behind Fortnite, which is free-to-play, on both platforms.
Top 10 Best-Selling Games of November 2023
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Madden NFL 24
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder
- EA Sports FC 24
- Super Mario RPG
- Mortal Kombat 1
- NBA 2K24
- UFC 5
Top 10 Best-Selling Games of 2023, Year-to-Date
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- Madden NFL 24
- Diablo IV
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- Mortal Kombat 1
- Starfield
In terms of platforms, the PlayStation 5 remained the best-selling hardware platform in both unit and dollar sales for November. Xbox Series X/S came in second for both measures. The newly released PlayStation Portal was the fourth best-selling platform of November.
Overall, U.S. consumer spending on video game content, hardware, and accessories fell 7 percent compared to this time last year, to $5.9 billion. Circana executive director Mat Piscatella says this decline was driven by a 24 percent drop in hardware spending, to $964 million, and a 3 percent dip in content, to $4.6 billion.
“All current generation consoles experienced a double-digit percentage decline in dollar sales when compared to a year ago, with Nintendo Switch showing the sharpest drop year-on-year,” Piscatella writes on Twitter.
For more, check out October 2023’s best-selling games and then read the September 2023 video game spending results after that. Read Game Informer’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III review and then find out what we thought of Hogwarts Legacy.
Have you been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III? Let us know what you think of it in the comments below!