In the United States since 2009, the formula for best-selling games has been relatively simple: either the current version of Call of Duty or a Rockstar Games title has been in first place. However, last year's Hogwarts Legacy managed to break this streak, as the game based on the Harry Potter universe was Circana Recently published data It says it became the best-selling video game in the country ahead of all others IGN.
Matt Piscatella, director of the analyst firm's video game division, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that Hogwarts Legacy has become the best-selling game on PlayStation and second on Xbox. Somewhat surprisingly, it came in fifth place on Nintendo Switch, although you can't really kick the ball there alongside Nintendo's own titles, and that version was released on the platform in mid-November.
By the way, it was already possible to guess that Hogwarts Legacy would rank high on the sales lists, as David Haddad, president of publisher Warner Bros., boasted. Interactive Entertainment, just last week To variety22 million of them were sold. At the time, it specifically stated that it was the best-selling game in the entire world, but whether that was truly the case is not clear from Circana's research. In fact, in fact
The US data isn't entirely accurate either, because it doesn't include online sales for Nintendo or Activision's Battle.net.
The latter could be important not only because of Diablo IV, but also because although Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III can already be purchased on Steam, and although most people play the game there anyway on console, many of people also bought Battle .online. In addition, we should also mention last year's best game, Baldur's Gate 3, which, despite its great success, is not on the list at all, obviously because developer Larian did not share sales data with Cirana.
Modern Warfare III still made it to second place, despite being released in November, third was the American football game Madden NFL 24, fourth was Marvel's Spider Man 2, and fifth was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Microsoft's biggest launch of the year, Starfield, also dropped out of the top 10, though the fact that it was included in Game Pass on its release day may have had a big role to play in this.
By the way, despite the limitations in measurement, how great it is that after 2008 neither Call of Duty nor Rockstar was the first, it is clear that the analysis company, which was previously still published company NPD Group, operating under the name NPD Group, the top list of the past decade in 2020. There were seven Call of Duty games in the top ten, Grand Theft Auto 5 came in first place, and Red Dead Redemption 2 came in seventh place. The only game in the top 10 that wasn't Call of Duty or one of Rockstar's titles was Minecraft in 10th place.
