Last month was filled with new releases and many of them turned out to be hits with players, according to the latest Circana U.S. Video Game Market Highlights report, which tracks video game-related spending for each month of the year. While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III took home the top spot for best-selling games of January 2024 in the U.S., various new releases cracked into the top 10.
That includes Tekken 8, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, Persona 3 Reload, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
Here’s what the top 10 best-selling games of last month look like:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
- Tekken 8
- Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
- Persona 3 Reload
- Madden NFL 24
- Hogwarts Legacy (this was the best-selling game of 2023)
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
- EA Sports FC 24
- The Last of Us Part II
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Two other new releases last month appear later in the list if you expand it to the top 20: Ubisoft’s latest platformer, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, came in at 13th and Bandai Namco’s Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash took home the 19th spot.
Broken down by individual platforms, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was the best-selling premium game on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S platforms. On PS5, Tekken 8 claimed the second spot, Suicide Squad the third spot, and Persona 3 Reload the fourth spot. Over on Xbox Series X/S, Madden NFL 24 came in second, with Suicide Squad in third and Tekken 8 in fourth.
On Switch, which does not include digital sales, Super Mario Bros. Wonder was the best-selling game of last month with Hogwarts Legacy in second place. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown came in at fifth on the Switch.
Palworld, the “Pokémon With Guns” survival game that crossed 25 million players yesterday, was, unsurprisingly, the number-one played title on Steam and the number-three played game on Xbox last month. On both Xbox Series X/S and PS5, Fortnite was the number-one most played title of January 2024.
Circana executive director and analyst Mat Piscatella writes on X (formerly Twitter) that the PS5 was the best-selling hardware platform of the month in both units sold and dollar sales, with Switch in second place for units sold and Xbox Series X/S in second place for dollar sales. After 39 months on the market, life-to-date unit sales of PS5 are tracking 7 percent ahead of the PlayStation 4’s pace, and 68 percent ahead of the PlayStation 3’s. Overall, though, January video game hardware spending fell 4 percent compared to January of last year, down to $378 million.
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Video game accessory spending increased by 45 percent last month compared to January of last year, up to $246 million. The PS5’s DualSense Edge was the best-selling accessory of the month. Piscatella says the recently released PlayStation Portal was shifted from the Hardware category to the Accessory category for January 2024, coming in at fifth for video game accessory spending for last month.
Overall video game spending across all categories grew 15 percent when comparing January of this year to that of last year, reaching $5.1 billion. Piscatella notes that January 2024 was a five-week period for tracking, though, whereas January 2023 was a four-week period.
For more, read Game Informer’s reviews for Tekken 8, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, Persona 3 Reload, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
What was your number one game of January 2024? Let us know in the comments below!
