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.
Here are the 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
And here are the 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 dougle-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!