For the first time since 2008, the best-selling game wasn’t ‘Call of Duty’ or a Rockstar Games title
When it comes to the best-selling video games each year, it usually isn’t much of a contest.
If there’s not a new release from Rockstar Games (a shoe-in for the top seller), then Call of Duty rules the list. It’s been this way for the past 15 years. But the rankings for 2023 are out—and the firepower of Task Force 141 has been defeated by a bunch of kids running around in robes waving wands.
Hogwarts Legacy was last year’s best-selling title, an incredible feat by any measure, but even more so given the lukewarm initial reviews the title received in February and the controversy surrounding Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling. Circana (formerly The NPD Group), which tabulates monthly and annual sales in the video game industry, does not report sales numbers, but Warner Bros. has announced the game sold more than 22 million copies last year, including 2 million in December.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III came in second, followed by Madden NFL 24, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (which was only available on the PlayStation 5).
Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling game of the year on PlayStation platforms, ranked 2nd on Xbox platforms, and placed 5th on Nintendo platforms. The last time a title topped the list that wasn’t Call of Duty or developed by Rockstar (makers of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption), it was Rock Band.
Overall, 2023 was something of a holding year for the industry, per the Cicana data. Total industry sales came in at just shy of $57.2 billion, a 1% improvement over 2022’s $56.6 billion. Hardware sales were largely unchanged at $6.6 billion, while game sales (both at retail and digital) saw a small jump from $47.5 billion to just under $48 billion. Sales of accessories were up 4% for the year.
For the important December sales month, overall sales climbed 4%, with both hardware and software recording slight increases, and accessories surging 14%.
Hogwarts and Call of Duty might have topped the sales charts, but when it came to player engagement in December, Fortnite continued to rule supreme, topping the monthly active user charts for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox. Some 36% of active PS5 players and 31% of active Xbox Series players played Fortnite at least once during December. That’s a 5% bump on Sony’s platform and a 3% increase on Microsoft’s.
Given the success of Hogwarts Legacy, you can expect more games set in the Potterverse that don’t focus on Harry and Voldemort. A Quidditch game is currently in beta, but Warner says it’s also working on “a series of other things” that are as-yet unannounced, which will “let the fans be part of this world and stories and characters in deeper and deeper ways.”
Here’s a look at the year’s best-selling games:
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