Modern Warfare 3 tops November sales, natch | Circana November 2023

Call of Duty almost always gobbles up year-end sales, and Modern Warfare 3 is no exception, according to industry-tracking firm Circana. The game topped the list of best-sellers for November, and is the fifth title in the Call of Duty series to do so. However, game and hardware sales were in decline overall for the month, dropping 7% from 2022. Hardware sales, in particular, dropped 24% year-over-year.

“November video game content spending dropped 3% when compared to a year ago, to $4.6 billion,” said Mat Piscatella, Circana’s executive producer for games reports. “An 11% decline in Console & Portable Content spending was partially offset by 3% growth across each of the Mobile, Subscription, and ‘PC, Cloud & Non-Console VR’ Content segments.”

As we noted in October, gaming hardware sales have been dropping steadily all year, with that month’s sales having the most precipitous fall of 23%. Now November appears poised to continue this trend, with a 24% drop compared with 2022. This actually brings the total number of hardware sales for 2023 down -1% compared with the year-to-date period in 2022 — it was 6% in October

Piscatella added, “A primary driver of the year-on-year decline in Console & Portable Content was the comparable strength of the new release slate. November 2022 featured the launches of both God of War: Ragnarök and Pokémon: Scarlet/Violet.”

Circana November 2023: Top 20 best-selling games in the U.S.

An unusual feature of November’s chart is that several titles have jumped into the Top 20 from much lower on the sales charts. Just Dance 2024 and God of War Ragnarok moved up in part thanks to holiday sales. Similarly, Hogwarts Legacy moved back up to the Top 5 thanks to its release on Nintendo Switch, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales likely saw a spike thanks to the recent release of Spider-Man 2.

November’s releases: What’s there and what’s not there

Out of November’s releases, Modern Warfare 3 and Super Mario RPG are the only two that made it into the Top 10. Other additions include Naruto x Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections, which admittedly received rather mixed reviews on launch; and Star Ocean: The Second Story R, a rerelease of the first game in the Star Ocean series, originally launched for the PlayStation in 1998.

Piscatella noted that one of October’s late releases hasn’t appeared on the November charts. Alan Wake 2, which recently won several awards at The Game Awards (including Best Game Direction), did not appear on the October chart due to falling after that chart’s reporting period. However, it’s also missing from the November lists. Piscatella notes this could be because Circana doesn’t report on sales data from the Epic Games Store, and the game’s lack of a physical release on consoles.

Circana November 2023: Best-selling games of the year so far

The year-to-date ranking hints at a possible upset for the end of 2023: It’s possible, and even likely that Hogwarts Legacy could be the best-selling game of 2023. This would be the first time in 25 years that the year’s best-selling game hasn’t been either a Call of Duty title or a Rockstar game, according to Piscatella’s recent interview with IGN. It’s still possible that Modern Warfare III could lap Hogwarts Legacy by the end of the year.